#stirg

[oldschoolfrp]

"Sword of Dawn" (Charles Vess cover for Dragon 134, June 1988)

[voidarkana]

On the second day of Souptober the prompt was Needle so I decided to make one of these guys into a minecraft model!

Maybe one day I'll make a mod about my spec evo/fantasy project, who knows...

[catbatart]

Drawtober Day6 of my RPG Monsters Prompt List Pt 2!

Day 6 is Stirge! Stirges look SO weird and goofy so I wanted to lean more into the mosquito look!

[monstersoffilgaia]

[chronivore]

[dm-tuz]

Maestro’s Monstrous Arms - Stirges

Rich folk sure are interesting… Must come with the territory. Enough money to just do the weirdest things. Either way, these magic items will come in handy.

Graphic design work by Kanehon and DM Tuz.

[dianeramic]

A series of fantasy-themed ink illustrations I did for my TTRPG stock art venture! There's a lot of these coming up, so stay tuned for more!

My DriveThruRPG store, where I upload these for game developers to buy and use, is here!

[dailymtgflavortext]

"I will never complain about mosquitoes again." —Imoen

-Stirge

[ratgraphic]

Ijotober Day 6: Stirge

Stirges are fey-tech constructs, spawned en masse in mysterious automated factories that litter the dark corners of Lucidia. Its unknown who originally designed them, or for what purpose, but to most they're seen as dangerous, self-replicating pests, large mechanical mosquitoes to avoid at all costs. Others, like the Butcher gang however, see them as tools, to be captured, rewired and used as weapons in the Material plane. Since the closing of the fairy portals, many of the rewired stirges still remain in Ijo without their operators to give them direction, so it isn't uncommon to now find stirge nests, strange, blood-clot-like structures hanging in dark corners of densely populated areas. Without the fey-tech ressources they would normally require to self-replicate, the stirges spawned in Ijo are often constructed of scrap parts and stolen organs.

[morganerpost]

Hazzad vs. Horrible Bugs, which will be unnamed. Ink, Markers, white gel pen on cardstock.

[oldschoolfrp]

Attacked by blood-sucking owl-like creatures with elephant trunks and serpentine tails -- These feel like reskinned stirges, especially comparing the scene directly to David Sutherland's Strategic Review illustration. Reimagining the appearance of common encounters is a great way to maintain a sense of exploring the unknown. (Emmanuel Bautista, from Wizard’s Aide, 1977, a self-published third-party OD&D supplement by Matt Whalley)

[thisisnotthenerd]

ok but all the bad kids were so strategic and effective in the last stand. i know gorgug's crits and fig's spells were huge but everyone really played to the best of their class. look here for the questions and killing blows.

adaine's spell usage was super effective--the mephits granting advantage and blinding opponents. the scatter to get the melee fighters where they're the most effective. using mirror image and her bonus action divination cantrips to not get hit. the use of the portents was excellent--keeping gorgug from taking huge damage from the purple worm and allowing fig to crit on the wyvern enhanced both of their strategy immensely. she split the difference between damage and utility very well.

kristen's bless let the melee attacks hit when they would have missed and she held that concentration the entire time, while intermittently healing and reducing the number of enemies they had to face (skeletons & manticore) and getting out of the way where she wouldn't be targeted. if she hadn't been moved to the side by buddy no one would have caught kipperlilly. absolutely critical support casting. ally really took a lot from playing margaret and applied it here.

fig, despite feeling insecure about her melee attacks, did a ton with her melee cantrip/smite combos (insane) and ambient spirit guardians. by moving around the battlefield strategically and drawing attention as the fake proctor she dealt with the smaller enemies (jellies, stirges, rust monsters, mimic) and actively took down the shrimp dragon, wyvern, and pentacorn.

riz went the other direction; hiding and using the extra action from haste to get sneak attack multiple times in the round. his sneak attacks really served to whittle away at high hp counts when the bad kids had to split focus. plus the clutch defeat of the roper and umber hulk was excellent.

fabian wasn't critting as often as gorgug, but he followed a similar strategy to fig; where she drew attention and killed enemies with AOE and melee, fabian drew attention from single combatants and dealt with them effectively: he practically soloed the hydra and roper with assistance from riz and kept the umber hulk and crab man off of his allies as the final wave converged.

gorgug thistlespring. the crit king. initially he was doing big damage in a similar strategy to riz; he got huge hits on the gorgon and shrimp dragon before taking on by far the most challenging enemy, the purple worm, with assistance from adaine's attack spells. two full turns as the only combatant taking damage from the worm, while knocking it prone every single turn.

this was the battle of the brands for the bad kids, scaled for level 13 combatants. they put everything into this fight.

[firnen-the-teragram-teabag]

Things that nobody said until I played D&D part 2

"the pope says 'the most powerful weapon in the world, my son, is the bible gun' and he pulls out the bible gun"

"your racism upsets the stirge so much that it just drops dead"

"explain why we shouldn't kill you right now" "my funky fresh moves"

"wisdom saving throw to not be horny"

"we are distracted by his sweet, sweet nipples"

"you are the Minecraft Alpha to our Minecraft 1.18"

"he's always visually moist"

"can i flirt with the eyes"

"I just casually slip the cake into my hat"

"onwards, to the piss hut!"

[bogleech]

Hello! as a fictional bug expert, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Bloodflies from Dishonored 2? (fun fact: i searched your blog to see if you’d mentioned them and the only post that came up was an ask from years ago, also from me, talking about the river krusts in dishonored 1 lmao. i swear i play other games!!)

Oh yeah I remember the krusts, and how the wiki thinks they're mollusks and they even make "pearls" but they are definitely goose barnacles! The bloodflies are funny because officially they're supposed to be insects, from what I've read, but anatomically they're as different from insects as insects are from shrimp.

Maybe that's just because it wasn't designed by anyone who really wanted to create a realistic speculative insect, but these only have four legs, each leg only has four segments, they have perfect ball joints that aren't quite like any current Arthropod, the mouth structure isn't anything like the proboscis of any modern fly or mosquito, the body seems fused into one large streamlined segment, they have no tarsal claws and their inner organs look totally alien. Then there's the fact that apparently these are a juvenile stage, and they become what the wiki calls a kind of wingless "beetle" when they mature. Do they call them beetles in-game? It doesn't look like that stage even has official artwork? In our world all flying insects are already adults. Except for one weird group of mayflies who go through two different winged stages, any insect you see with usable wings is finished growing for good, so for an arthropod to go backwards from that is completely alien!

Aesthetically I like how bird-like they look, like stirges from D&D

Maybe that was even a part of their inspiration?

If they did evolve or mutate from an insect though, I bet it was a lousefly

This is making me want to do more articles on my actual website that just break down a single creature or monster, without necessarily being part of a whole series like the Pokemon reviews. I did think for a while that I should do just "random" daily creature analyses or by request. I should probably go back to that.

[chronivore]

Stirge

[dm-tuz]

Maestro’s Monstrous Arms - Stirge Mask & Stirgerang

Some working titles are never replaced, sadly. Not all of them can be winners. But, luckily the actual products turned out fantastic! That mask will surely strike fear into the hearts of the client’s enemies!

Graphic design work by Kanehon!