A yearly tradition of mine is to draw a batch of monsters for each day leading up to Halloween. It started off with just the classic spooks, but has since gone on to cover everything from mythological beasts to literary nightmares to unsung creepy things I think deserve more attention.
Halloween '24
the Summoned
"Ylluferac ecnuonorp
Tey elballiknu tsaeb eht
Ni sedisni peek esaelp"
The hell kind of incantation instructions are th— Oh! Oh.....
Collapsofemuris geocatapeltes is a curiously mechanical critter with telescopic legs and a rifle-like mouth that spits clay pellets with deadly accuracy. Oftentimes this shot only manages to stun the target, but the tripodero is surprisingly swift on two retracted feet and starts eating its prey alive before it has time to recover. The gluttonous gun-beast will devour every last bit of its meal, bones and all... which is quite a feat with a tube mouth.
The tripodero dreams of sniping the snipe, but that fearsome fowl has proven to be quite elusive.
Clawed out of the skull of one who saw too much, the Eye vows to witness all manner of messed up things. Mostly because it's a sick freak, but also because it believes if no conscious being sees something it isn't truly "real" — like, it happened in a literal sense, but without someone to categorize it, it's all just random atoms preforming meaningless nonsense. A tree falling on the island's only other inhabitant isn't a tragedy if there's no one to say trees are supposed to be upright.
The Eye's bearer enjoys this perverse pastime as well, and ardently believes that observing an event changes it. That's not the Eye's point of view, but the two have fun debating such topics. So much so they often miss whatever it was they were observing... which just leads to more fun debates!
Spearfinger is a gruesome stony monster lives up in the Great Smokey Mountains, but occasionally ventures down to the human villages disguised as a kindly old woman, befriending little kids who've strayed too far from home. The mysterious granny offers to comb the child's hair, softly, lovingly, until the little one falls asleep and —SNIP— Spearfinger cuts out their liver to eat!
Many have tried to slay the terrible fiend, but to no avail. A little titmouse claimed attacking Spearfinger's heart would kill her. but all weapons simply bounce off her rocklike skin. I hope someone carves out that little liar's tongue...
At a truly terrifying... er, two feet in size, the Mongolian Death Worm may not be the biggest beast, but its corrosive toxins more than make up for it. The slightest touch is enough to kill, and the worm can explode regenerative parts of itself to kill anything and everything in the immediate vicinity — except itself. Mercifully, the desert-dwelling annelid abhors the sun and usually stays underground. Unless it pretends to be some corpse's intestines; that gag is always worth a sunburn!
The bunyip's booming bellow seems to come from everywhere, and it ambushes its prey while they're busy wondering if that patch of grass somehow made all that noise ("everything is deadly in Australia!!"). While the bunyip appreciates an easy meal, it worries about how dumb these humans are becoming.
Moby Dick has accrued countless battle scars over his long tenure as an oceanic menace, including a twisted lower jaw. While one wonders what insuperable pelagic forces could bend the leviathan's mandible so easily, the whale himself is hardly impeded by such an egregious injury, as many a cephalopod and sea captain can attest.
