Sure, the Nightmare is the horse the bad guys ride—but it’s also intelligent, bloodthirsty and a foe to be reckoned with in its own right.
Monster Chronicles: Nightmare reinvents this fell beastie with new powers, and includes a desert variant perfect for dropping into a desert-based adventure path or Egyptian adventures—or it might leave its fiery hoofprints across other kinds of deserts, such as frozen tundra and mist-shrouded moors.
The Monster Chronicles series provides ecologies and variants for lesser-known monsters as well as some gaming classics. Every monster will come with adventure hooks and surprises to catch even the most seasoned adventurer off-guard.
"The Nightmare" is written by gaming legend Ed Greenwood and Paizo’s own Rob McCreary.
Pick up Monster Chronicles: Nightmare now, and put the terror back into your PCs!
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The pdf consists of 8 pages: 1 page front cover, 1 page credits (and some text) and 1 page OGL (and some text).
It is presented in an easy to read, horizontal way and a beautiful pdf: The artworks are (with one small exception) top-notch.
The contents are:
Nightmares in the Wild: How they view their environment, planar and material.
Physiology: Really interesting read, takes not of the eyes, the flames, disguising and how they and their riders react to their flames and fires started by them.
Nightmare Sex: Reproduction and myths concerning nightmares and whether and how they can spawn tieflings.
A side box details how nightmare flesh can be made into alchemical flame bombs.
"Nightflames" and "Nightgloom" detail the gloom and flames they can release from their bodies.
"Nightmare battle tactics" is just that: Battle tactics. Efficient, intelligent, cool, battle tactics.
"Nightmares and their Riders" detail the potential relationships of the fiendish horses and their riders.
A side box details information on Vampiric Nightmares. Nice.
"Elder Nightmares" features some cool ideas on how the creatures advance and what abilities they might gain.
"Nightmares, Nightmares everywhere" deals with the connection of the horses to nightmares, i.e. bad dreams of children or omens of death for warriors.
After that, we get an elemental variety of the Nightmare, the "Karabasan". Cool critter.
Conclusion:
This entry is highly imaginative, cool, brimming with ideas and re-imagines the iconic steed of the dark knights. For the low price, we get an awesome, new take on the nightmare that lacks no associated trope or fails to address any legend while breathing life into the stereotypical "evil horse", making it something far more sinister.
Ed Greenwood and Rob McCreary have written an awesome small file that goes beyond ecology-standards.
Launching Open Design's Monster Chronicles series for Pathfinder, this work describes a fell creature of legend: the Nightmare. Forget bad dreams and wild horses, this is something quite different and - in this interpretation - a LOT more scary!
Normally serving as mounts to the most potent of Bad Guys, they are very hard to catch especially on their home plane... hence their riders are, by virtue of merely being mounted on a nightmare, obviously beings to be reckoned with. But never mind the rider, nightmares themselves are intelligent and potent foes, especially if you are unlucky enough to encounter a pack of them.
Copious details of their habits, anatomy, physiology and likely interactions with other creatures are given here - plenty enough for them to be a spectacular one-off encounter or a recurring theme in your game. The way in which they produce the flames for which they are notorious is particularly interesting - apparently it's something to do with their sweat. Particularly devious characters might be interested to know that a piece of nightmare flesh continues to secrete the flammable substance and if kept under a fire-resistant liquid can be used as a powerful firebomb...
Catching and binding a nightmare to one's will is a challenging task, and could provide an entire adventure if a character wanted to acquire such an exotic steed. The desert variant is detailed fully (the regular sort is in the Pathfinder Bestiary), and... yes. They do cause people who encounter them to have nightmares of the bad dream variety.
There's an amazing amount of detail crammed into the 8 pages of this book, a fine example of an 'ecology' article that puts a monster in its proper context so that it becomes much, much more than just something to fight.
Just got this, and I must say, I love it, great job guys. Odd that the "desert" Nightmare turned out to be a elemental fire nightmare, which is still quite cool in it's own right. My only real complaint is that there are no game mechanics for the additional abilities of the nightmare, like the nightgloom and the hooves of hell. That aside, it's great to see these guys getting some attention of their own at long last.
So, this article is pretty good, huh? I'll get it then; you can never have too many devil animals for Halloween!
Though for some reason I keep thinking of the nightmare sounding like Mister Ed. "Aww, Wwwwilbur, can't we crush the souls of the innocent some other night? I ahve a date with a hot unicorn!"
