Teratic Tome by Rafael Chandler is a role playing game supplement published by Neoplastic Press for use with OSRIC but should be compatible with most OSR supplements. In particular, it is aimed at Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition). As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and all of it has been designated as Open Game Content as a result.
This is an 118 page PDF that was purchased as a Pay What You Want supplement from DriveThruRPG. The colour cover is a separate jpg. It is also available in hardcover from sites such as Amazon and as print on demand from Lulu (and apparently the hardcover has an orange spine, meaning it will match the original AD&D books). The PDF is the version reviewed. Two pages are the front matter, one page is an alphabetical listing of contents, one page is art credits, one page is About the Author and some ads for his books and two pages are the Open Game License.
Explanatory Notes is a single page on using the supplement. This states that TAZ is Target Armor Zero (THAC0, in old terms) and that Move, if there are two figures, has the first for ground and the second for swimming or flying. There are also notes on the Treasure Tables, explaining how to translate the description into amounts of coinage, jewels, gems, scrolls, potions and magic items. This also explains how to roll from d100 to d100,000.
The vast majority of the supplement is therefore the monsters, and monsters is the correct term here. These are not beasts or creatures, but vile and nasty monsters. There are too many of them to go through individually, but here are some highlights.
There are some monsters that appear to be a way to get around some of Wizards of the Coast‘s Product Identity. The Audiences come in three varieties, Discerner, Onlooker and Witness. The Audiences were created through a necromantic ritual that transferred the souls of halfling mages into monstrous, globular bodies. They were feared until a mad mage carved out all their eyes and created spies from the eyes and spiders. In case the hint isn’t there, these were essentially beholders. Bothrians are octopoid-headed humanoids that sometimes come in purple, and damage the intellect when they attack. Mind flayers, in other words.
There are new demons and devils, including some unique ones and ten venerable dragons, each unique and each one evil. Each venerable dragon’s appearance is preceded by signs and omens before they actually appear. When they do arrive, they cause great devastation.
There are halflings that worship an unpleasant goddess and who are arranging their settlements to spell out her name. What will happen when this is achieved isn’t known, but it’s probably bad. Many of the monsters are far worse.
These creatures are not nice. Even those that are not evil – and most of them are – can still be unpleasantly dangerous. There are no flumphs here. There is only one creature with a good alignment – and even that occasionally gathers to annihilate a city; they consider other species with their imperialism and technology dangerous and will eventually plunge the world into barbarity.
There are more than a few unique creatures, and those that are unique are not solely extremely powerful creatures. The extensive descriptions mean that the monsters have adventure hooks built into them. The descriptions are also often not nice, although they frequently include what the creature smells like, for some include long, complicated schemes that the monsters execute in order to achieve their goals (which characters would presumably want to stop). Such as kidnapping seven people and immobilising them, gradually and painfully killing six of the captives and using their body parts to create paintings of the dead person then gifting the survivor with the six portraits. This sort of complex behaviour is common and more than a few of the creatures are linked to others.
The final section is encounter tables. This lists the creatures in various categories; Undead, Unique, Aquatic and by level from 1 to 10.
Teratic Tome in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with every creature and variant linked. The alphabetical linking just lists the creatures by letter and name; it doesn’t give the page number or hyperlink to them. Navigation is good, but it could be better. The text maintains a two column black and white format and appeared almost free of error. A plus is that every monster has an illustration, in black and white as the original bestiaries were. These illustrations are from a number of artists and a couple of the styles are not totally compatible with the rest. Still, the presentation is excellent – although many of the images are definitely for a mature audience. Be warned that the illustrations are not nice (and many are NSFW); many involve nudity and unusual limbs and tentacles growing from odd places.
This is not a bestiary of nice creatures. Neither the pictures nor the descriptions will be to everyone’s tastes; in fact some will probably hate them. For the descriptions do tend to the disturbing at times. These monsters are definitely suited to a darker campaign and some have the potential to be campaign wreckers. With the style being more Old School the monsters lack the extensive lists and descriptions of special abilities that might be found in newer D&D-based games. What they have instead is extensive, well detailed and interesting descriptions of how the different creatures behave. Disturbing, but interesting. Even if the monsters are not suited to everyone, the way they are presented is excellent. More bestiaries should emulate the overall style – if not the dark, grim and horrific feel – of how this is presented. Lots of potential adventure hooks to make monsters far more interesting and providing ways to integrate them for a campaign.
This supplement is most definitely not for everyone but it is still a well written bestiary and for those who do like these types of monsters, it is excellent. It’s worth taking a look simply to see how the monsters are written about. Due to the nature of the supplement, it’s a hard one to rate. It will either rate very high or very low depending on the reader’s preferences. Teratic Tome is recommended for anyone who likes truly monstrous monsters, and for those who want to see how they are written about, and it can be found by clicking here.
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