Halloween Monsters! Part 9

Here's another monster from Arlin Ortiz! Because who doesn't love a good octopus-bird?

All of Ortiz' Monsters are compiled on his Tumblr page here.

I love the idea of a small, common animal with a nightmarish twist. Finches and sparrows are such common, even boring birds. You see hundreds of them every day and probably barely even notice. Imagine walking past one of these ubiquitous flocks of nondescript LBBs (Little Brown Birds- the proper birdwatcher nomenclature) and suddenly feeling a strange sense of dread and fear.  You have no idea where it's coming from and keep walking until you finally chance to notice that one of the birds has small, twitching tentacles tucked up under its beak.

Another creature in a similar vein is the skiurid of D&D 3rd edition. It's a black squirrel that creates an aura of cold darkness and can actually drain a small amount of energy from a person and condense it into an acorn that it collects for the winter. Skiurids are one of those things that regularly got put onto "stupidest D&D monster" lists back when that was a big trend (I alternately hate and love those things. Hate because I think the authors are boring, unoriginal RPG munchkins who only like big, terrifying monsters that can rip you to pieces. Love because I've found some of my favorite D&D monsters through those lists), but I love 'em.