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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Ustilagor

The ustilagor is a Dungeons & Dragons monster originally published in the first edition Monster Manual II. It was a psionic fungoid creature shaped like a human brain. The original concept had neither eyes, mouth, nor mouthparts (see below).







The original illustration of the ustilagor. Note lack of facial features, but what fun is a crawling brain without eyes and an orifice? It also had limbs with which to scurry across a dungeon floor, but I decided that, if I did try to provide it with limbs, they would probably be damaged during the firing process.




Later editions of D&D reimagined the ustilagor as a larval form of the intellect devourer, a dog-sized human brain on four legs which, yes, did its best to make you stupider.