Fiend Factory

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Fiend Factory was an article series that ran in the early issues of White Dwarf, in the days when that magazine was devoted to all manner of RPG systems prior to Games Workshop founding its own multiverse of game systems and thus turfing out rivals to focus on their own product. The Fiend Factory was a series connected to Dungeons & Dragons, and was a place where fan-submitted monsters would be edited and then printed for the perusal and interest of players and Dungeon Masters across the world. A surprising number of fan-favorite D&D monsters got their start here, and the splatbook "Fiend Folio" was actually intended to be something of a Greatest Hits Collection of submissions to this article series.

Considering how that book is received... yeah, you have been warned in terms of quality.

Its precursor was "Monsters Mild and Malign", which only ran two articles in total in White Dwarf issues #4 and 5, before being renamed to the arguably catchier Fiend Factory. Its successor was the even shorter-lived Creature Catalog of Dragon Magazine, which only saw six articles in total released over the course of Dragon's lifespan, covering D&D editions 1-3.

Index of Fiends

Because 1d4chan is awesome, we're gonna tell you what issues of White Dwarf had Fiend Factory articles in them, and what monsters were in each one.

White Dwarf #6

Needleman: A green-skinned forest-stalking humanoid covered in iron-hard spikes like pine needles, which it can launch as projectiles. Created when a Raise Dead goes wrong on a body lying amongst pine needles, but is not undead.

Throat Leech: A leech that lives in water and swims down the gullets of drinkers to suck blood from inside their throat, suffocating them.

Mite: A really small, nasty, goblin like creature.

Bonesnapper: A small (5ft tall) carnivorous dinosaur that loves to gnaw on bones, and which collects human jawbones as a status symbol.

The Fiend: Strange fiendish-looking creatures descended from a "fallen angel" and "the evil god Pan", which are normally evil, but temporarily switch alignment due to guilt when they kill somebody. This was reinvented in the Fiend Folio as the Forlarren.

Disenchanter: A spindly blue dromedary camel with an elephantine snout that feeds on magic.

Nilbog: A "reverse goblin" that is harmed by healing effects and healed by attacks.

White Dwarf #7

Necrophidius: A bone golem variant constructed in the image of a naga.

Rover: An expy of the guardian "monster" from the 70s suspense TV show, The Prisoner.

Living Wall: A relative of the Gelatinous Cube that pretends to be a stone wall. Was reworked in the Fiend Folio as the Stunjelly. Not to be confused with the Ravenloft living wall.

Volt: A strangely shaped flying beastie that attacks with a whiplike tail that delivers electric shocks.

Gluey: A strange creature that resembles a mummy, but covered in sticky glue, which it can use to trap weapons. Was probably reworked into the Adherer.

Squonk: An ugly vole-like creature that sits around all the time weeping at its own ugliness.

Eye Killer: A strange fiendish creature that resembles a bat-snake hybrid with a lethal gaze attack.

Witherweed: Predatory ground-covering vines that emit poisonous smoke when burned.

Withra: A "comedic" spin on the Wraith to create a defective version that is immune to magical weapons but harmed by normal ones, can't be turned, and on the off-chance it does hit, will instantly dissipate but also give the victim +1 level (assuming they survive the d6 damage it inflicted).

White Dwarf #8

Tween: A strange wraith-like being that bonds with a "host" and grants them increased luck... by draining it from tehir traveling companions.

Chaoticus Symbioticus: A slime that bonds symbiotically with powerful predators, using illusions (fake treasure + making its "host" look less powerful) to lure adventurers into fatal confrontations. Was renamed the Symbiotic Jelly in the Fiend Folio.

Stinwicodech: A bizarre frog-headed ape-thing whose tongue attack will first boost a random ability score by +1d6, but then will cause it to decrease it by -1d6 if it hits a second time.

Whirler: A malicious air elemental in the guise of a miniature whirlwind that seeks to envelop victims so it can tear them apart.

Carbuncle: A malicious, armadillo-like monster that uses the valuable gem it grows to wheedle its way into groups, where it then sows discord.

Coffer Corpse: A spiteful undead created from somebody whose funerary rites were never completed, and who now fights to keep from being sent on.

Rock Beast: A malevolent earth elemental in the form of a living boulder that seeks to crush organic creatrues that come within range.

Turung: A strange hairy malicious thing that can cast Web and Anti-Magic Shell. Outright called out as one of the worst monsters submitted to Fiend Factory by that point.

White Dwarf #9

Svarf: Blue-skinned, orange-eyed humanoids that act as "the mediary between goblins and kobolds". Basically the root-stock for the later Xvart.

Dokon: An intelligent talking ape that will not attack unless it is attacked or robbed first, in which case it will fight to avenge itself or recover its treasure. If it wasn't for the fact that this came out in Oct/Nov 1978, one might think that this was a Donkey Kong reference.

Imorph: A strange slime that slowly shapes itself into a duplicant of the individual it's fighting.

Stair Stalker: A green hairy thing always found obsessively walking up and down a staircase.

Whipper: A mobile plant that attacks with two deadly flailing vines.

Flying Fish: A giant lungfish that levitates through internal sacs of hydrogen.

Urchin: Flying pincushions.

Umpleby: A dimwitted, shaggy humanoid that uses static electricity to defend itself.

Nasnas: A bizarre monster that looks like a human somehow cleaved in half down the middle.

White Dwarf #10

Blink Skeleton: A skeleton that can teleport around at random.

Inverse Monster: The Nilbog's "temporal inversion" applied to any other monster.

Mimble: A strange, insane little monster that is both possessed of incredible regenerative powers that make it indestructible and a hard-core masochist.

Familiar: A variant familiar in the form of a black cat that guards a wizard's chest of magical items. It has nine lives, and each time it is killed before the 9th is expended, it returns to life stronger than it was before. Was given the clearer name of Guardian Familiar in the Fiend Folio.

Sandman: An elemental of sand who can put victims to sleep.

Eastern Skeleton: A skeleton with the fighting skills of a monk.

Warlock Cat: A "demon-familiar" in the form of an ethereal tiger that is a powerful combatant, but demands a daily human or demihuman meal and will eat its "master" if they don't pick somebody. Was reworked into the Hellcat in the Fiend Folio, which was a little less stupidly useless as a familiar, but still not worth it, since it now demanded a weekly meal.

Bragger: An obnoxious nigh-invulnerable imp-like creature that incessantly talks about how great and terrible it is.

White Dwarf #11

Lauren: A bizarre, three-headed, three-eyed, -three-armed, three-legged, hermaphroditic humanoid. Later known as the Tirapheg.

Spook: A generic winding-sheet type ghost... with the plower to instantly convert a player into another Spook upon hit.

Witherstench: A stinkier-than-normal skunk.

Tribe of the Stone: A race of reptilian humanoids from the Underdark that abduct humans to turn them into more of their own race.

Berbalang: A winged goblinoid with the power to astrally project itself.

Sheet Phantom: A haunted cloth that strangles victims to death and then animates their body as a Sheet Ghoul.

Lapidan: A mass of killer rope.

Devil Dog: A white-furred, blue-eyed dog that stalks cold regions for food.

White Dwarf #12

Assassin Bug: 2ft tall fly-like bug-men that use living humanoids as incubators for their young.

Iron Pig: An attempt at making a cheaper version of the iron golem. As a pig.

Grell: A tentacled giant brain with a beak that eats people.

Hook Horror: A clawed fiend from the Underdark.

Githyanki: An evil race of humanoid warrior-wizards escaped from slavery by the illithids.

Giant Bloodworm: An overgrown leech.

Desert Raider: A desert-dwelling race of humans with solid blue eyes that wear water-recycling body-suits, known to use Purple Worm teeth as daggers. Basically a knock-off of the Fremen from Dune

Three-Headed Skrat: A skeletal-looking serpent that pops out of fissures and uses illusions to make itself look like it has three heads.

White Dwarf #13

Doombat: An undead bat with a whipping barbed tail that carries a ghoul-like paralytic touch.

Terithran: A magic-hating humanoid from the Ethereal Plane that seeks to destroy magic.

Imps: Four new elemental versions of imps; Fire, Smoke, Steam and Molten (Lava). Possibly the ancestors of the Mephit.

Shadow Demon: A fiend trapped in the form of a living shadow.

White Dwarf #14

Gurgotch: A demonic black elephant.

Mindweb: An ephemeral entity that enslaves bans of other monsters and forcibly links them into a singular hive mind.

Energy Cyclone: A whirling vortex of glowing light.

Ice Maiden: An elemental of ice in the form of a beautiful naked woman with icy hair, pale skin and blue eyes that possess a Flesh to Ice gaze attack, essentially an icy variant of the medusa.

Gazer: A variant Beholder that looks like a sphere with a mouth, a center eye, a ring of 10 small eyes around the central eye, four eyes around the mouth, and skin patterned so that it looks to be covered in eyes.

White Dwarf #15

Heat Monster: A metal sphere that radiates intense heat and sporadically throws fireballs at its enemies.

Tacharanid: A shapeshifting monster that adopts new forms to compensate for weaknesses of its previous forms.

Dragon Dog: A firebreathing dog, basically an upscaled Hell Hound.

Russian Doll Monster: A hulking humanoid beast that has the size and stats of a Stone Giant, but only has 10 HP. Each time those are depleted, it disintegrates to reveal a smaller monster, with stats akin to a progressively weaker monster. In turn, it fights as a Hill Giant (10HP), Ogre (10 hp), Bugbear (9HP), Gnoll (8 HP), Hobgoblin (7 HP), Orc (6 HP), Goblin (5 HP) and finally a Kobold (4 HP). The whole thing is an elaborate nested construct (or perhaps illusion) being controlled from its core by a Leprechaun, which upon being exposed will turn invisible, grab the nearest bit of loot, and then flee for its life.

Time Freezer: Peaceful, shaggy, ape-like humanoid with the ability to put others into temporal stasis, which it uses to escape danger.

Pebble Gnome: Dour, timid, diminutive gnome characterized by its total immunity to all magic, malign or beneficial.

White Dwarf #16

Tenser Beast: A self-propelled Tenser's Floating Disk turned into a weapon by its creator, making it into a flying blade.

Manscorpion: A race of centaur style scorpion-human hybrids that serve as agents of a God of Neutrality.

Ogress: A female half-ogre that uses magical trinkets to disguise itself as a human woman.

Wrecker: A super-powered Iron Golem created to guard a powerful magical artifact.

Plantman: A hideous-looking humanoid plant with a single dead-white eye and long tentacles that end in lamprey-like mouths for arms. They are based on the plant men from the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is the full description:

A plant/human mutation, the plantman is generally human in form and stands 10'-12' high. It has two sinuous arms like elephants' trunks, at the end of each of which is a mouth with razor-sharp teeth. The creature is almost hairless and a ghastly blue in colour; a thick mass of jet black hair, each strand looking like a fat worm and in constant writhing motion, tops the head. There is a single, dead-white eye in the centre of the forehead circled by a broad ring of white 'flesh'. The nose is a ragged, inflamed hole in the centre of the face. The plantman moves on flat, broad feet each 3' long and the creature has a thick tail 6' long which is used in attack as well as for balance.

The plantman's mode of attack varies according to the circumstances. If there is sufficient space for it to do so, it will leap high in the air over its intended victim and lash downwards with its tail, such an attack being rolled as if for a monster with 8 hit dice and delivering 1-20 damage if successful. Otherwise it will attack with the mouths on the ends of its arms, each doing 2-8 damage (these attacks are resolved on the normal table). For each successful mouth attack there is a 75% chance that the mouth will attach to the victim's body, doing an additional 1-4 points of damage and sucking away body fluids (reduce constitution by 1 point for each successful attack of this type, the lost points being recovered at the rate of 1 point per hour).

Plantmen are extremely simple creatures, having only the most basic of nervous systems. They will usually be found grazing in valleys of woodlands, for they are basically vegetarian, eating by running their 'hands' over vegetation. They have a deep respect for clerics and will only attack members of this class if highly provoked; they are in great awe of druids and will never attack members of the druid class. They are too stupid to be trained to obey even the simplest of commands.

White Dwarf #17

Night Rider: Malevolent, light-averse humans who seek to conquer with armies of men, orcs and trolls.

Spice Worms: Giant worms, complete with Swallow Whole attack, that produce a spice that grants clairvoyant abilities. A shameless pastiche of Dune.

Heat Skeleton: A more powerful skeleton that can Heat Metal at will.

Bodach: A strange, ugly little humanoid, like a goblin with clawed bird's feet.

Green Worm: A giant worm (but not as big as a Purple Worm) with a deadly poisonous sting.

Goom: A species of slime most notable for its tar-like adhesiveness.

White Dwarf #18

Mandrake People: Humanoid plants who inhabit the forests, and who hate humans for harvesting their unborn babies - mandrakes - as aphrodisiacs.

Hound of Kerenos: A variant Hell Hound that is tied to Ice rather than Fire.

Phung: An insane mantis-headed humanoid that loves to scare people to death, taken from Jack Vance's "City of the Chasch" novel.

Couerl: A monstrous cat with a mane of tentacles. Distantly related to the Displacer Beast.

White Dwarf #19

Empipath: Small furry creatures that drive people into fits of emotion-driven madness.

Stormbiter: A lesser elemental of sand that only emerges when sandstorms drive them wild.

Undead Horse: Skeleton and zombie versions of the common horse.

Werefox: A kitsune-inspired therianthrope characterized by always being female and absolutely hating religion, seeking only to dupe or kill priests and burn down temples. It has extremely powerful affinity for the illusionist arts.

Darkhawk: A rotting undead falcon with a deadly gaze attack.

White Dwarf #20

Creeper: A shambling slimy monster with tentacles for arms that feeds on blood.

Water Leaper: Annoying aquatic predators that resemble fin-winged snakes with the heads of frogs.

Slime Beast: A mass of malevolent mud that can either sludge about like a slime or assume a crudely humanoid form.

Frog-Folk: Evil, brutish, cannibalistic humanoid frogs. Possibly an earlier draft of grung and/or bullywugs.

Melodemon: A fiend resembling a giant snake with a stinger on its tail and the head of an anthropomorphic alligator.

Cauldron-Born: Unique undead always created in batches; as one batch-member falls, the remainder get stronger.

White Dwarf #21

Brothers of the Pine: Forest dwelling undead that create more of themselves by killing their victims and replacing their blood with pine sap.

Chthon: An intelligent rock formation that can telepathically control plants and animals.

Enslaver: An intelligent blob that can dominate the mind of another intelligent being upon physical contact.

Micemen: What do you get when an evil wizard performs crossbreeding experiments between orcs and brownies? Vicious little micemen.

Dragon Warriors: Warriors that are created by smashing a dragon's teeth (one for each) while speaking the dragon's name. The warriors can be commanded to fight until slain or dispelled, and they gain immunities based on those of their parent dragon.

Grey Sqaargs: Stone humanoids similar to golems, created by the dwarves to serve as guardians of caves and mines.

Cyclops: Similar to the traditional cyclops from Greek myth, a large evil humanoid with a single eye that it uses to hypnotize its victims.

White Dwarf #22

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Four powerful undead lords who serve the demon prince Orcus.

Ungoliant, Queen of the Spiders: A demon who takes the form of a giant monstrous spider, based on the character Ungoliant from the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Capricorn: A rare and powerful water elemental of good alignment. They have the head, torso, and forelegs of a white goat while their lower body is a blue-green fishtail. They have long sharp horns, are extremely intelligent, and serve as loremasters of the sea.

Crystal Golem: As the name implies, a golem made of crystal.

White Dwarf #23

Flymen: Tiny humanoid beings with the heads and wings of houseflies. They are organized into societal groups called hives, and are made up of various "classes" including the warrior, drone, artisan, flyguard, and flymage.

White Dwarf #24

(Keep in mind going forward that this is an April Fool's Day issue, so consider yourself doubly warned.)

Bonacon: A species of cattle that defends itself against attackers by employing weaponized flatulence with deadly poisonous effect. A few rare bonacons are capable of winged flight, using their powerful farts as rocket assisted takeoff.

Llort: A troll that is afflicted with nilbogism. Like the nilbog it is healed when struck, but instead of a troll's normal regeneration ability, the llort suffers degeneration. Three rounds after first being hit, the llort loses three hit points per round until it reaches zero and dies, though it may be brought back to life by damaging it, at which point it will start degenerating again. It sucks to be a llort.

Todal: A creature sent by a demon or devil to punish evildoers for not being evil enough. Inscrutable bordering on unfathomable, the todal looks like a blob of glup, sounds like screaming rabbits, smells like old unopened rooms, moves around like monkeys and shadows, and kills by gleeping. Even the flumph is like wtf.

Tali Monster: A giant, obese humanoid that is so morbidly fat that it cannot move on its own, but must be carried from beneath by a team of 35 goblins. It can attack by means of its fists and noxious breath.

Dungeon Master: A nasty humanoid that hates all forms of life. It enjoys following adventurers around and telling them what they can and cannot do, but will take bribes of at least 500 gold pieces.

White Dwarf #25

Dream Demon: A demon whose natural form is that of a small black skeleton with large, beautiful butterfly wings. Besides other magical abilities, it can use a powerful illusion to appear as any creature of less than human size. A dream demon may sometimes be given to a high level chaotic evil illusionist as a familiar.

Incubus: The male counterpart to the succubus.

Brain Sucker: A brain trailing a spinal cord that attempts to take over the mind of a victim and feeds on its Intelligence.

Guardian: This generically named variant of the necrophidius (issue #7) is used to guard its creator's property. The guardian's spirit is able to leave its body and animate its petrified victims, one at a time, and can regenerate while in its own body.