Monster Madness: Darkness Monster

"I attack the darkness!" (Courtesy Girius)

Monster Madness looks at forgotten monsters from the early days of gaming, when creativity ran rampant, game balance was an afterthought, and critters with little rhyme or reason plagued dungeons for the sole purpose of brutally murdering adventurers. From the pages of the Dungeoneer Compendium, Jim Ward brings us the Darkness Monster.  Three guesses as to what it does.

By now, you should know that anything with the word "Monster" in the title is a creature to be greatly feared, because the creator was more interested in the effect of the beast than any fancy-shmancy names. 

Darkness isn't just this critter's namesake; it's also a client.  You see, the Darkness Monster generates super-darkness in a fifteen-foot radius.  Back in the old days, there was just plain old darkness, so this brand of super-duper darkness was truly frightening.

Unlike some of the other one-note monsters, the Darkness Monster has a bit of personality.  It's a reptile that stands nine feet tall atop six legs and attacks with two "hairy-armed" paws. Not sure why a reptile has hair but we're in Mad Monster territory.  Here's the most important part of the monster:

Its jaws has three sets of fangs, but it never uses them in battle.

With Monster Madness, I usually feel bad for the adventurers.  But this time I feel bad for the Darkness Monster.  First of all, it has three sets of wicked fangs to show off, but it's not allowed to use them.  Second, since it's always in darkness, NOBODY KNOWS IT HAS FANGS.  Would an adventurer really be able to tell the difference?

"Ouch!  That felt like the swipe of a hairy-armed paw, not the chomp of a beast with three pairs of fangs."

I imagine the Darkness Monster tells all its friends it bites everything to death, even though it doesn't.  Probably walks around with a toothpick sticking out of its many fangs just to add to the mystique.

It's a good thing the Darkness Monster doesn't use its jaws, because its paws alone inflict 8d8 damage.  Yeouch! Imagine how much damage its three jaws might inflict!

The biology lesson isn't over though.  The Darkness Monster's four tentacles (did we mention the tentacles?) generate the darkness and allow it to see in the dark.  Since its reptilian, it cannot be detected by its heat signature – so there's no getting around this monster's darkness, infravision-elves!

A lot of Monster Madness are silly and some are definitely deadly, but the Darkness Monster is just plain frickin' horrific.  From its unbelievable paw damage to its ability to blind opponents, to its magnificent smiles, you don't want to "attack the darkness."