Never gonna turn away a bestiary, especially one that looks as good as the Dragonbane Bestiary (2023).

Cover is by Johan Egerkrans, but the interiors are by David Brasgalla. I don’t really know his work, and can’t find much else in the RPG space, but he’s an excellent pick. I don’t know if it is his natural style or if it is the result of the art direction, but he compliments Egerkrans’ work very nicely in terms of approach and palette. The contrast lies in compositional elements; Brasgalla favors soft curves and rounded surfaces, while Egerkrans tends toward the flatter and angular. See that angular bend in the cover lindwyrm? I don’t think there is so sharp an angle in Brasgalla’s entire portfolio inside the book. But otherwise, the color range and the atmosphere is very similar. I can easily “see” Brasgalla’s interpretation of the same scene.

Anyway, a fairly standard assortment of fantasy, folkloric and mythological monsters. The manticore has wings (booooo!) but the chimera does not (yaaay!). The range of dragons is determined by age, and then the addition of the lindworm. There is enough of a language around most of these monsters that they are either like favorite sweaters or subtly subverted enough to be a new kind of delight (the giant amoeba, the monstrous boar that is the Calydon). There is only one new-to-me, genuinely bizarre monster: the karkion, a humanoid cat. I am guessing, like ducks, they have a longer history in Drakar och Demoner than I am aware of?

Each monster is accompanied by a suggestion on how to run a random encounter with them, and a more elaborate adventure seed. It isn’t as elaborate as the sort of table support you get in Monster Overhaul, but it’s in the same family tree, and I like it.