CONTENTS

3 KING OF THE MONSTERS 29 WONDROUS WEAVINGS By Stan! By Jennifer Clarke Wilkes It’s the end of the world as we know it. Deck the halls with the finest tapestries.

4 THE TARRASQUE 35 INNS IN AN INSTANT By Jeff LaSala By John Hasznosi Learn the secrets of this primordial, Inns and taverns made easy. party-eating monstrosity. 49 THE WIDOW’S SPIRIT 9 THE END IS NIGH! By Rodney Thompson By Dennis Johnson She’ll make you wish you were dead, too. MeetSample the new and improved file tarrasque and its twisted cult following. 52 THE WINTER OF THE WORLD 13 YE OLDE CREATURE By Keith Baker CATALOGUE Beware the bogeymen of the Eldeen woods. By Tim Eagon Behold four monsters plucked from the Palace of the Silver Princess, the halls of 55 THE HIGH PRIEST Castle Amber, and other classic dungeons. OF BEHOLDERS By Ed Greenwood 21 BACKDROP: HOCHOCH Meet the eye tyrants’ number-one fan. By Claudio Pozas Visit a town in dire need of adventurers.

ON THE COVER: Craig J Spearing rocks your world with his awesome illustration of the terrible tarrasque. TM EDITORIAL

418 DRAGON December 2012 King of the Monsters Senior Producer Christopher Perkins By Stan! Producers Greg Bilsland, Stan!

Managing Editors Kim Mohan, Miranda Horner Here is it, the end of the year—plus, if you believe Of course, there’s more to our “Doom and Gloom” the doomsayers, the end of the world. In honor of issue than just the tarrasque. In Eye on the Realms, Development and Editing Lead Jeremy Crawford the close of the Mayan long-count calendar, and the you’ll meet the self-styled Priest of the Beholders. Developers Tanis O’Connor, Chris Sims mystic apocalypse that some claim this event augurs, In Eye on Eberron, you’ll travel with the Children Senior Creative Director Jon Schindehette we’ve made this month’s theme “Doom and Gloom.” of Winter, whose goal is nothing less than bringing and to set the right tone, we’ve included a pair of about the end of the world. There’s also a “Backdrop” Art Director Kate Irwin articles about one of my favorite D&D monsters of all article that takes us to the city of Hochoch in Grey- Publishing Production Manager Angie Lokotz time—the tarrasque! hawk, and “Wondrous Weavings,” which presents a There’s pretty much just one tarrasque adventure collection of enchanted tapestries. Digital Studio Consultant Daniel Helmick plot, and it goes something like this: The tarrasque Unfortunately, this issue also marks the end of my Contributing Authors Keith Baker, Jennifer wakes up and starts smashing everything within involvement with Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Clarke Wilkes, Tim Eagon, reach. Everyone else in the surrounding countryside It’s rare, after you’ve been in the industry as long as I Ed Greenwood, John tries to survive. Most do not. have, to be able to find a project that fulfills a lifelong Hasznosi, Dennis Johnson, In many ways, the tarrasque is like my favorite dream (one only has so many lifelong dreams to go Jeff LaSala, Claudio Pozas, movie monster, Toho Studios’ venerable “King of the around), but this one has. I’ve been a fan of Dragon Rodney Thompson Monsters,” Godzilla. And the similarities are more since I first encountered it in the early 1980s, and it Contributing Editors Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald than just superficial. Sure, they’re both titanic liz- was a moment of intense pride to see my signature Gray, Tanis O’Connor, ards that, while similar to dinosaurs, clearly stand gracing the editorial page, where so many names Penny Williams apart and aboveSample that classification. file However, both are I’ve known and respected for years have previously more than mere gigantic beasts—they each represent resided. I’m honored to have played a part in the his- Contributing Artists Zoltan Boros, Christopher the unbridled fury of an aggrieved primal force of tory of this great gaming institution, even for just a Burdett, Matt Dixon, Tony Foti, nature. With the Big G, it’s Mother Earth wounded by few short months. Aaron Miller, Hector Ortiz, Chris nuclear weapons, while the tarrasque is quite literally The time has come for me to step away from my Seaman, Phill Simmer, Craig J the personification of the primordials’ rage at having duties at Wizards of the Coast for at least a little Spearing, Ben Wootten been pushed aside by the gods. while. But I’ll still be around, just on the other side of Cartography Mike Schley When the tarrasque shows up, the best the PCs the metaphorical DM screen. So thank you for letting can do is redirect its rage so that it doesn’t flatten me join you around the gaming table. I hope we’ll get innocent towns and villages. And even if they do to do it again soon. manage a victory over the creature, it merely slips back into a long slumber, from which it will even- Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, D&D Insider, their tually rise and begin rampaging again. In the end, respective logos, D&D, Dungeon, and Dragon are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA and other countries. ©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC. maybe that’s what I like best about the tarrasque. It This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States presents heroes with a genuine conundrum. Do they of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written selflessly protect innocent lives, or simply try to save permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC. This product is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, places, or events their own? What are they willing to risk in order to is purely coincidental. stop the apocalypse that the tarrasque represents? History Check: The Tarrasque By Jeff LaSala Illustration by Craig J Spearing

The script was elegant, unhurried, composed by the steady hand of an educated man in seeming possession of his fac- ulties. The pages had been neatly gathered, rolled into a scroll case of bone capped with silver, and delivered to the queen’s agent directly. Its writer and sender, purportedly an archmage, elected to remain anonymous. The courier relayed only this description of his client: a figure in gray, cowled and soft- spoken, whose certainty of purpose was so strong as to be Sample file palpable. Here follow the words that make up his attempt to understand the tarrasque, and his effort to pass that knowl- edge on. . . . Sole Survivor You think you know monsters. You may spend your life battling aberrations in subterranean realms, demons in blasphemous temples, or angels in the astral skies. You may even have slain dragons. But you have never seen the wrath of a true mon- ster—one that devils and archons alike would shy from, a beast that slumbers now in a place so remote even the deep-dwelling drow cannot fathom it. I have looked into the soulless eyes of the Great Beast, and it looked back into mine. Whether by fate

TM & © 2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC. All rights reserved.

December 2012 | DRAGON 418 4 History Check: The Tarrasque

or fortune, I have been spared its teeth and the acidic higher and deeper—into the enmity between the gods divine prison, and the archomentals retreated into razors of its gullet. I have lived to tell the tale. and primordials, which began with the Dawn War. the depths of the Elemental Chaos to thwart their The monster gave no warning when it emerged It was in the hoard of Arvvestrix the Black, a enemies—but before they fled, they hatched a plan from beneath the countryside of my father’s land, wyrm of singular notoriety, that I found a rare book. to birth the most terrible monster the world has then quickly destroyed a nearby farm and devoured The writing was in the Supernal script, the language ever seen. every living occupant. In less than a day, the barony of astral and divine beings, and the author spoke was ravaged by its hunger: meadows and forests knowingly, seemingly at first hand, about the Dawn Weapon in Waiting trampled and desecrated, livestock and game swal- War. Now, I have read many texts about that mythic lowed or driven away. Our keep, which had withstood conflict in the Age Before Ages, but most of them are All wars beget new weapons. Conflict is the father of peasant uprisings and enemy sieges for centuries, contradictory and slanderous—the propaganda of one invention, after all. In the midst of its cosmic strife, crumbled under the fury of the tarrasque. faith or another. This tome, however, was different, the Dawn War propagated many abominations— I alone survived, whether by happenstance or and from its pages came the foundation of my quest living weapons used by both sides, some of which still some greater design. Was my escape from death a for answers. lurk in forgotten or familiar places. Atropals, astral sign? I began to believe so, and I became grateful not The world began with the primordials, elemental stalkers, phanes . . . the list goes on, and mortals are only for my continued life but also for the opportunity beings of godlike power, whose works were violent fortunate if they never meet a single one of them. The that my survival afforded me: The appearance of the and ever-changing. When the gods arrived and tarrasque was the last and unquestionably the most tarrasque on my family’s land set me on the path of shaped the churning chaos into a hospitable, stable powerful of these new weapons of war. my life’s work: my study of the Great Beast. But for world where new beings could live and thrive, the pri- Before their exile, the archomentals wrought one that event, I might have lived and died as the idle mordials were outraged and sought to tear the gods’ final act of spite. Combining their talents, they fash- son of an inconsequential nobleman. A greater trag- work apart. So began the Dawn War, a struggle so ioned in secret an abomination of unquenchable edy, surely? long and vast that no mortal can truly grasp its scope. hunger. Imix the Fire Lord infused the tarrasque with In the years that I have walked this earth, the The primordials could not conceive of defeat. burning internal heat and murderous energy. Cryo- Great Beast has emerged three times. The first time, Foolishly, they fought against one another as often nax the Bringer of Endless Winter and Ogrémoch to destroy all that I once held dear; the second and as against theSample gods and the angelic file armies of their the Stone Tyrant gave it immortal endurance. Olhy- third, to enlighten me. In my work, I have delved dan- enemies. Though the gods were outnumbered, they dra the Mistress of the Black Tide and Yan-C-Bin the gerous ruins, consulted with mystic sages, and spoken worked in concert and with ordered determination. Great Cloud inspired the creature’s inexorable wrath. at length with the dead. My quest for knowledge of The Dawn War finally ended with the defeat of the There is evidence that at least two Elemental Princes the Great Beast has set me upon fey pathways and the primordials. Most were slain, imprisoned, or forced did not survive this creation process—a force of acid roads between the planes. into dormancy so they could no longer threaten the and a creature of bone and blade—but their names Now I am much too old. I have learned many stability of the world. have been lost. things. And so I impart this warning to you: Accept During the struggle, some primordials were more The archomentals then seeded the newborn tar- the inevitable when the Great Beast returns for the prudent than most. These forward-thinking entities rasque into the still-young natural world, leaving it to last time. temporarily set aside their differences with one incubate for centuries in the elemental core. One day, another for the sake of survival. The most powerful it would awaken, once more to unleash the primordi- Dawn of the Beast were the self-styled Elemental Princes, called by als’ wrath and tear apart the works of the gods. some the archomentals, who formed an alliance. The primordials intended that their volatile pet No fewer than a dozen sages I spoke with ascribed Together they sought to unleash a being known as would be a being so mighty, so intelligently mali- the tarrasque’s existence to fell rituals and the dark, the Elder Elemental Eye, who they believed was cious, that it would pluck dragons from the sky and “miscast” magics of mortal wizards. Such claims are the first and most powerful of their kind. The gods summon exarchs from the heavens to feast upon. Yet vague, lazy hand-waving of dubious scholarship. To ultimately foiled their plans; the Eye remained in its their work was necessarily imperfect, tainted with understand the origin of the tarrasque, one must look the same mindless rage that roiled inside its makers;

December 2012 | DRAGON 418 5 History Check: The Tarrasque

longer-limbed and much bulkier. Wingless, horned, have you heard of either of them? No, because none and armored in “a shell like melted diamond,” the survived to keep those names alive. The Great Beast HISTORY CHECK creature possessed a deafening roar and devastatingly does not discriminate between good and evil, law or A character who makes a DC 15 Arcana check massive tail. Ponderous, yet capable of surprising chaos, dark or light. Despite the nature of its makers, knows that the tarrasque is purported to be a bursts of speed, the creature shrugged off spells and the tarrasque is not a force of evil. It favors warm tremendous beast that appears from time to slew every knight and summoned monster in its path. flesh, but if something is consumable—a broad term time and ravages the world around it. A DC 25 Most who beheld the Great Beast were transfixed in indeed—it can and will be consumed. Elf, demon, Arcana check will reveal that the tarrasque is horror, a sensation with which I am intimately famil- human, giant, illithid, halfling, sapling, catapult: all an abomination formed by the primordials as iar—too overwhelmed by its presence to even flee. All food for the tarrasque. a weapon against the gods, that it sleeps in the things within its reach were devoured or destroyed: core of the world and only seldom rises. A DC people, horses, wagons, siege weaponry. It was the Cycle of Chaos 30 check reveals the tarrasque’s bond with the ghostly voices in the speaking-gem who named the No doubt you have wondered: If the tarrasque cannot world itself, its near-indestructible nature, and creature “tarrasque.” The term is derived from an be slain, why are we still here at all? Why hasn’t just about everything the narrator postulates in elvish word meaning “unstoppable.” The old, broader everyone seen it? Why, in some realms, does no one this article. meaning has long since fallen out of use, and the word now has only one association. even believe in it? Miraculously, Aeritueur did not fall to the Great Because the tarrasque is not tireless. On each Beast’s hunger as its neighboring realms had—else occasion when it disappears, the Great Beast’s weak- ness—time itself—is revealed, though few possess the the primordials were not the gods, after all. And so there would be no records of this first emergence. The frame of reference to understand it. The tarrasque with the gods almost upon them, the archomentals creature abruptly stopped just before setting upon the is an engine of destruction and elemental energy concluded their work, their power nearly spent, their kingdom, then sank smoothly into the nearby moun- sheathed in worldly flesh. It is therefore subject to living weapon prematurely abandoned and thus tainside like a xorn passing through solid rock. It was worldly limitations. It is powered by the magic of the malformed. never heard from again during Aeritueur’s history. I have studiedSample evidence from other file old civiliza- primordials, but even fire must have fuel. Everything tions across the known realms that knew of the the tarrasque consumes is broken down and con- Early Assaults Great Beast’s passage. Primitive paintings on cave verted into potential energy—energy that the beast For centuries the tarrasque remained dormant. The walls, glyphs etched into desert tombs, and sculp- cannot call upon until after it slumbers for some archomentals had ceased to be concerned about their tures perched upon crumbled temple walls depicted period of time. secret project. They had fallen to fighting one another an unkillable, wingless monster that rose from the This cycle of sleeping and waking is erratic. In again, only occasionally halting to advance their earth and devoured everything around it. None of older accounts, the tarrasque slept for two years at collective agenda for the Elder Elemental Eye. Mean- these accounts confused the beast for any sort of a time, then rampaged for only a few days before while, in the natural world, mortals and immortals dragon. Feared as they are, dragons are nothing like disappearing again. Sometimes it would become alike remained unaware of the danger germinating the tarrasque—even the vilest of wyrms can be rea- more active, staying awake for months, chewing up beneath them. soned with. whole swaths of a continent with no sign of stopping, Then one day it finally awoke. A long-ago kingdom I once explored the ruin of a drow city, all but for- then sink into the earth again and slumber for more named Aeritueur was the first to speak in definite gotten by Lolth’s faithful, that had suffered the fury than a decade. terms of the tarrasque’s rampage. As chronicled of the tarrasque. The human realm of Irentia and the When the tarrasque emerges from its subter- by eladrin magic in a malachite “speaking-gem,” demon-worshiping gnoll tribes of Gajraharr were also ranean slumber, it does so almost anywhere. Most the loremasters of Aeritueur described a colos- both obliterated. The former was a champion of righ- reports of the beast stem from wilderness areas sal beast superficially resembling a behemoth but teous gods, the latter a blight upon all free races. But because densely populated areas suffer the most casualties. Therein lies the difficulty in studying the

December 2012 | DRAGON 418 6 History Check: The Tarrasque

Eyewitness to I have heard apocryphal tales of the tarrasque’s death. In every such account, it is said the corpse FOR DMS: NATURE OF Destruction could not be salvaged because it sank quickly into THE BEAST the ground, reclaimed by the earth. In truth, the Many have tried to slay the tarrasque. Of course they creature’s “death” is merely a premature descent into Is the narrator correct about all this tarrasque have. Felling dragons, while exceptionally difficult, its elemental torpor—an involuntary reaction that lore? He certainly seems to thinks so. He has can earn you wealth and fame. Slaying demons and removes it from the threat of further injury, and the put in more hours researching it than any other defeating devils has a strong appeal for the boldest start of another period of slumber. being he knows of. And according to the Arcana of heroes. But the tarrasque—the ultimate killing Some tales have reached my ears of the tarrasque check listing on page 13 of the Monster Manual, machine, eater of kings and kingdoms—is the greatest slumbering in shallow places, later to be disturbed by he’s on the mark. catch of them all. Can you imagine the glory? a dwarf miner’s pick or roused by Underdark explor- But he doesn’t have to be right. As DM, you’re I did, once, the second time I faced the tarrasque. ers. In each case, the Great Beast either devoured the the final arbiter of your game. The tarrasque I was hale and full of vengeance. But instead of intruder or else merely stirred and fled deeper, not can be whatever you want it to be. The original taking part in the frontal assault, I watched from yet desirous of waking in full. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual 2 a distance, casting protective spells and conjuring entry said nothing of its origin, while most sub- defenses for my allies. Despite my efforts, and theirs, ther acets sequent materials blamed the Elemental Princes the tarrasque tore through them all. My betrothed O F of Evil (the archomentals) for the tarrasque. The was among them, a paladin as courageous and true- of the Beast iconic D&D beastie is loosely based on the real- hearted as any exarch, devoted to her deity in every world myth of the Tarasque, a turtle-shelled way. She faced the Great Beast armed with a foot- Not all who believe in the tarrasque’s existence fear French dragon that was charmed by a saintly man’s lance, but she did not wield it. Instead, she the creature. Some people revel in the destruction it woman and was slain, like King Kong, due to its sought to calm it with hymns, to halt it long enough unleashes. Numerous cults devoted to the Great Beast weakness for beauty. In your game, maybe the for our companions to pierce it with powerful weap- have risen from the ashes of its rampages—and then Great Beast can have a similar soft spot. ons. For herSample trouble, she was bitten file in two, then faded away as quickly, their “god” silent for too long to It’s your campaign. If you want the tarrasque swallowed. Hers was not a hero’s death. Not worthy of sustain mortal interest in their cause. Those cultists swimming around the Astral Sea, chomping on a bard’s song. It was hideous, and it was swift. that survive through the full span of the tarrasque’s gods and angels, go for it. If you want it rampag- I alone survived. Again. Devastated, I sank further slumber are usually eaten when they finally meet ing like Godzilla through a city and fighting other into my studies and began to enlist other monster their monstrous benefactor. colossal monsters, do it! If you want it to be con- slayers to quest against it. Of all the cults I have observed, none have thrived trolled by powers of good or evil, why not? The next time I encountered the Great Beast was more than the Reckoners, founded three centuries when it emerged from a glacier thirty-three years ago by a deva who was himself slain by the Great later in the frozen north. The small army I com- Beast and rose again. While I shake my head at the manded nearly succeeded, piercing it with enchanted Reckoners’ mad vision, I admire their talents. They tarrasque and its long history. There are rarely any blades seemingly faster than it could dispose of them, have found ways to harness the negative energy that survivors. From small hovels to whole nations, where but in the end it trampled and devoured them all. flows in the tarrasque’s wake and have wrought the tarrasque treads, precious little endures. Hence, Even the red dragon I rode failed to do lasting harm. atrocities almost as great. even descriptions of the Great Beast are the stuff of When I brought my mount close, the wyrm’s power of The tarrasque has also factored into the history of legend. Few exist who have spied it directly. I am flight failed it—a vestige, perhaps, of Yan-C-Bin’s mas- powerful artifacts. Due to the elemental acid and fire one of these. tery of air. Unseated, I fumbled with my own magics. that churn in its stomach, it is capable of dissolving The tarrasque rushed at me, and only a wisely pre- anything, even otherwise indestructible objects. It is pared teleportation spell saved me. written that the Fang of Baator, the Ebon Band, and

December 2012 | DRAGON 418 7