Episode 243: Shade and Shedu, Greater

Monster Man Episode 243, Shade, and Shadu come a greater. Hello and welcome to Monster Man, a show about Monsters Book as Monsters are great. I'm James Holloway and I'm reading my way through the gaming books of yesterday. And as I do, I'm talking about the monsters that I find in them. Their history, their mythology, their ecology, their imagery and how to use them in games. In today's episode, we're continuing our journey through the S chapter of Monster Manual 2, the 1983 supplement for advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition. We're faced with two monsters and I've got to be completely honest with you. I only really have anything interesting to say about one of them. I'll see what I can do about the other one. That's the bad news. The good news is that the first one is, I think, pretty good. That is the Shade. So a Shade is not the same thing as a Shadow, but it sort of appears like it by which I mean it's a person, but sort of a shadowy person. And exactly how shadowy the Shade looks is not really clear. The illustration tends to suggest that it's a dark shadowy figure, but the text suggests that it can be difficult to tell a Shade from somebody who's not a Shade. So here it's maybe more like a vampire or it has a kind of parasitic relationship with the Shade that's inside it, which is an image that I kind of like. So we're told that Shades were people who somehow managed to sell their souls or trade their souls for shadow stuff. We're told that, but what it actually says is, "All knowledgeable authorities agree that Shades are or were normal humans who through arcane magic or dark sciences have traded their souls or spirits for the essence of shadow stuff." Now as we know from Deity's Demi Gods, humans have both souls and spirits. We're then told that Dwarves, elves, gnomes, half elves, halflings, humans, and an occasional half-orc can do this, which must suggest that it's their spirits because elves don't have souls, they only have spirits. Yeah, I never thought that would come in handy. I mean, I guess it's debatable how handy that was, but you know what I mean. So the Shade gains from this a bunch of shadowy powers. It gives them unnatural vitality, including regeneration. They can slowly regenerate hip-point damage. They can even regenerate things like lost limbs, although it does specify that they don't regenerate if they're beheaded. So I guess the idea is that you cut one's head off to kill them. I don't know if there are beheading rules, so that sounds like an irritating subsystem that you'd have to cope with, coming from vampires as well, I imagine. They can also do stuff that's a little bit more ambitious, so for example, they can use shadow to teleport back to the plane of shadow, or they can create shadowy duplicates of themselves, basically as a kind of form of illusion. Like a lot of shadowy-themed creatures, they have differing levels of power depending on how bright the environment that they're in is. So if you're fighting a Shade, they're pretty tough, and you would be better off, you know, shining a bright light on it. I always like this with shadow monsters, because first, it gives people something to do that's not. You know, if you're not a very combat-y character, but you wind up in a fight like this, it can be frustrating, and it's certainly not like very exciting to participate in the combat by standing around and waiting for your turn to miss. So anything that you can do that's like a clever strategy rather than just dealing or taking attacks, I feel like is a lot of fun. It gives players a new way to engage with the fight. And in this case, it works particularly well because it's intuitive. If you're fighting a creature of darkness, it just makes sense that you could fight it with light. That's what you would think of when you thought of a monster like the Shade. We're also told rather tantalizingly that the method of creating Shades has been lost, and I mentioned the unnatural vitality of the Shade, which is something that has the most immediate game relevance, but perhaps most importantly, becoming a Shade makes you immortal. So you can really see why all sorts of bad folks would want access to any good folks for that matter, but good folks' last willing probably does sell their soul to an alien symbion in exchange for immortality, right? So you can see why all kinds of people would want it. So it's almost like a little scenario hook, you know, the lost secret of Shade immortality. Furthermore, we're told that because Shades don't like bright light, they try to stay away from the prime material plane unless they can't avoid it. And what that means then is presumably becoming mortal and then you go off to live on a darker plane. The idea of Shades being unable to avoid coming back to the prime material plane is an interesting one. So they do not leave that plane unless sufficiently motivated, such as by treasure, enforced servitude, revenge, etc. Treasure feels weird to me, like it's hard to imagine that there are a lot of shops on the plane of shadow where you can spend all these silver pieces, but I get the other two. Particularly, I feel like the enforced servitude is interesting because you can imagine that a particularly evil wizardy type would not only want to become a Shade themselves in order to become immortal, but it would be something that they could reward their followers with. You know, if you serve me, I will reward you with immortality and superpowers, but in exchange, you got to go steal the blue jewel. Or even perhaps they have some kind of process for putting the shadow into somebody. And also ensuring their servitude, so like these factories where we're pouring shadow goo into your eye holes to turn you into a dark super soldier. You know, it only just now occurs to me that maybe one of the things that I find appealing about the Shade is that I basically played one. This is not an AD&T game, but I played a character whose powers basically came from the fact that he had this symbiotic shadowy thingmajig inside him that gave him darkness control powers. So clearly there's something about that visual that appeals to me, but also I think part of the appeal is just that I do like monsters that make you think about the environment around you in D&D. I think one of the things that has been most harmful about video games, for example, and their influence on the way that we imagine, you know, dungeon environments or other fantasy environments. Actually, you could say this about D&D as well, really. I don't think it's video games necessarily, but the idea of exploring these unfamiliar locations has sort of slightly been lost as they've become familiar. There's an existing genre of dungeon where we all kind of know what a dungeon looks like and as a result, we don't really think about it in the same way. And a lot of dungeon rooms in modern D&D scenarios are just kind of fight squares. You know what I mean? It's not really that important what's in them. And I like games with a lot of investigation and exploration in them. You know, maybe it's the archaeologist in me or whatever, but I feel like anything, any monster that makes you think about the environment helps you imagine yourself into that space and therefore builds immersion in the game. And that's something that I really like. Boy, it's a good thing I like the shade because our next monster is the Shedu Kamagreiter. It's not that there's anything wrong with the Shedu Kamagreiter. From a purely mechanical perspective, I understand why you might want to add a little more gradation to the Shedu, right? They make an okay divine patron or divine enforcer monster and this one is a bit buffer and has some more powers than the regular old Shedu. But in terms of the monster, I don't have anything more to say about the Shedu Kamagreiter that I didn't already say about the Shedu because it's just a Shedu, it's just bigger and stronger. I will say one thing, okay, like the Lamasu Kamagreiter, the Shedu Kamagreiter is sometimes the leader of a community of Shedu's. This does not work. That's not, it doesn't work. What do they do all day? One Shedu is fine. There's a peel of thunder that heavens open, behold the Shedu. Two Shedu's is okay because that's how you see the architectural Shedu, right? Like they'd be standing either signed of the doorway of some temple, halt traveler, none may enter here, save those blessed by the gods. Fine, that's Shedu stuff. But like a little Shedu band, what do they do all day? Or they just like hang out, not having hands? I'm sure they can use their psychic powers to light their campfires or whatever. I don't know. They're sustained by divine energy and they don't need campfires. Whatever, there's no way to imagine a community of Shedu's without it looking dumb. There's not even any real way to imagine that hierarchy without trivializing it and making it feel mundane. You go to the two Shedu's at the door of the temple and one of them is halt traveler, none of my pasts except those who are blessed by the gods. You're like, "Well, I was blessed by an evil god. Does that count?" They're like, "Oh, I don't know. Let me call my supervisor." The supervisor's Shedu turns up. I didn't know. One Shedu can be if played right, exotic and mysterious. A bunch of Shedu's all hanging out with their boss seems like it's pushing that and pushing in the direction of being kind of silly. So the Shedu Comma Grader, it's fine if you wanted to Shedu in your game but you didn't think that they were tough enough. Well, the Shedu Comma Grader is the monster for you. Or I guess if you thought, "Well, why don't they have this specific power?" But thematically, they're the same as the Shedu and I already covered Shedu's. Alright. And next episode will be pushing on further through the S-Chapter and we'll talk about the Serene and the Skeleton Comma Animal. But before then, we're gonna have a bonus episode this week. So stay in by for an episode on Monsters of the Far Realm. Here on Monster Man. A show about monsters because monsters are great. Thank you for listening. If you have a favorite monster or something you'd like me to talk about, you can reach me on Twitter @gonsohistory or by email [email protected]. To support Monster Man, just go to patreon.com/monsterman. Thank you to Ray Otis for designing the thumbnail image. Our introductory music is "Solve the Damn Mystery" by Jesse Spalane from the album "Descent of the Goober Monster" used under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Thank you again for listening and please join us next time.