The thing I said yesterday about Earthdawn’s pool of artists being a good excuse for the existence of additional books? Goes double here, because monsters. This is Creatures of Barsaive (1994). David Martin is the cover artist (I think those are jungle griffins). Interiors, we have Kent Burles, Joel Biske, Earl Geier, Jeff Laubenstein, Larry MacDougall, Jim Nelson, Robert Nelson and Mike Nielsen. Laubenstein is the stand-out here for me, I feel like he comes out of the Russ Nicholson school of All The Details.

Sort of an odd mix of creatures. There are many that are recognizable from myth, legend and other RPGs. The chimera and manticore both have wings, boo! There are a lot of critters that seem just to the left of mundane expectation, big cats, wolfy things, a snow badger? Then there are entirely original monsters that are, for the most part, twisted horrors. I’m here for these. Like the Krillra, which is basically a hunting horror, flying around, eating horses. And the globberog is cool, a sticky blob creature that glues corpses and trash to its body for armor. And, I mean, OK, despite the wings, that Laubenstein manticore is dope (his harpy, though, is not).

All the entries are written in an in-universe style, so full of lore. Each comes with an adventure hook, too. A solid monster book.