BASH Fantasy Monster File - The Mantisaurus Rex!
Will Thrasher has been doing up a series of images based on some crazy hybrid puns I tossed out as example of monsters to be found in our Menagerie in Oddities for a Wizard's Tower, which you should go buy right now. After the ant-lion and the wolf-spider, we moved on to the tarantula-hawk. Now Will has gone completely overboard - abandoning the punny part (which we should have got rid of a while ago, cuz - puns), and shooting for the Big Time with the Mantisaurus Rex.
Of course, I had to stat him up for BASH Fantasy.
So here he is, big as a dragon and twice as gruesome.
If you look at the other hybrids backgrounds, you will detect a common thread. M. Rex is also part of that thread. So here is what we know about him so far.
This monstrosity, dubbed the Mantisaurus Rex by the lone insane survivor of the expedition to the Titan Peaks. Apparently, the local baron sent out a scouting party to determine the origin and intent behind a series of raids and monstrous attacks in recent weeks. After losing three horses to a pride of ant-lions, the scouting party made for the remains of a ruined fort that stood witness on a mountain pass to the Titan Peaks. Nearly there, the beleaguered scouts heard a low droning noise that got louder even as the sun was eclipsed by something massive above them. Leaping or flying down upon them was a terror as large as a dragon.
What followed was more massacre than fight as the mantisaurus rex clawed, grappled, chewed and flung about horses, wagons and scouts with equal savagery. The single survivor recounted hiding among the wreckage of the wagon until the monster finished feeding and wandered off. Running for hours with a pack of wolf-spiders baying in pursuit, he made it back but barely.
If there is any good news to report from the scouting mission, it is this. there seems to be no evidence that the malevolent intellect responsible for creating these hybrid horrors was able to control the mantisaurus rex. Surely, if the Transmogrificator were able, he would have sent one to prey upon the baron's lands ere now.
