Jacob Blackmon Blogs

 As we are coming closer to Halloween, I felt it time to post some monsters to add to one's villainous cast. In this post, I present the Dybbuk . This fiend is from Jewish folklore and is an evil spirit-creature that possesses the corpses of the dead, moving their bodies in a horrific mimicry of life and performing disturbing behaviors intended to frighten and terrify the living. Dybbuk are the inspiration for the Kandaran Demons, aka, the "Deadites" of the Evil Dead franchise. Dybbuk Evade 16 Hit Points 53 (4 HD) Armor Points 0 Str -2, Dex 4, Con 3 Int 2, Wis 3, Cha 2 Luck 7 ATTACKS Disturbing Behavior: While possessing a corpse, the dybbuk can make the corpse perform disturbing behaviors, including spinning its head all the way around, vomiting blood, or making a quadruped walk like a biped. Anyone that witnesses this behavior must make a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of the dybbuk. The frightened target can repeat the saving throw at the end of their...

In my most recent D&D campaign -- set in my homebrew world of Embria -- the PCs are Narezza (a hexblood shadow sorcerer/undead warlock) and Lady Buffy (a human cavalier fighter). They have been exploring the Dungeon of the Fire Opal, and recently discovered that the dungeon used to serve as the laboratory to the ancient archmage Thessalar. This discovery was inadvertently made when the released a clone of the archmage from its clone vat. The clone of Thessalar is incredibly personable, amicable... and (Nerezza succeeds on her Insight check) thoroughly bat-shit insane! The PCs plan to help lead the clone of the archmage to the nearest civilized community (the dwarven necropolis-city of Hammerfast), where they intent to ditch him on their earliest opportunity. (Nerezza: "We were NOWHERE near Hammerfast! Got it?") This event recently prompted a string of silly conversation points that might as well be canon, for what is about to happen, once I get the campaign back up and ru...

I have been playing Bladur's Gate 3 (a magnificent game, I highly recommend it) and I'm still trying to wrap my head around something.... WHY IS VLAAKITH BACK??? HOW is Vlaakith back!? Oh, right... context... I am seeped in D&D lore. I LURVE me some lore! I specifically know a LOT about D&D lore --- from a multitude of different worlds and eras -- because I decided to based my D&D campaign setting (Embria) on the idea that the various D&D adventures (especially the big memorable ones) serve as the historical points of the setting. And due to this research, I have read deep into the adventures and what they entail. And there have been several adventures over the last two decades that focused heavily on githyanki and the destruction of their lich-queen Vlaakith. The first of these adventures is The Incursion, ending in "The Lich Queen's Beloved" in Dungeon Magazine #100 (published July 2003). This was an adventure for the D&D 3.5 rules. The next ...