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dailyadventureprompts · 8 months

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Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

As a game of heroic fantasy that centers so primarily on combat, D&D is more often than not a game about righteous violence, which is why I spend so much time thinking about the targets of that violence. Every piece of media made by humans is a thing created from conscious or unconscious design, it’s saying something whether or not its creators intended it to do so.

Tolkien made his characters peaceloving and pastoral, and coded his embodiment of evil as powerhungry, warlike, and industrial. When d&d directly cribbed from Tolkien's work it purposely changed those enemies to be primitive tribespeople who were resentful of the riches the “civilized” races possessed. Was this intentional? None can say, but as a text d&d says something decidedly different than Tolkien.

That's why today I want to talk about bandits, the historical concept of being an “outlaw”, and how media uses crime to “un-person” certain classes of people in order to give heroes a target to beat up.

Tldr: despite presenting bandits as a generic threat, most d&d scenarios never go into detail about what causes bandits to exist, merely presuming the existence of outlaws up to no good that the heroes should feel no qualms about slaughtering. If your story is going to stand up to the scrutiny of your players however, you need to be aware of WHY these individuals have been driven to banditry, rather than defaulting to “they broke the law so they deserve what’s coming to them.”

I got to thinking about writing this post when playing a modded version of fallout 4, an npc offhndedly mentioned to me that raiders (the postapoc bandit rebrand) were too lazy to do any farming and it was good that I’d offed them by the dozens so that they wouldn’t make trouble for those that did.

That gave me pause, fallout takes place in an irradiated wasteland where folks struggle to survive but this mod was specifically about rebuilding infrastructure like farms and ensuring people had enough to get by. Lack of resources to go around was a specific justification for why raiders existed in the first place, but as the setting became more arable the mod-author had to create an excuse why the bandit’s didn’t give up their violent ways and start a nice little coop, settling on them being inherently lazy , dumb, and psychopathic.

This is exactly how d&d has historically painted most of its “monstrous humanoid” enemies. Because the game is ostensibly about combat the authors need to give you reasons why a peaceful solution is impossible, why the orcs, goblins, gnolls (and yes, bandits), can’t just integrate with the local town or find a nice stretch of wilderness to build their own settlement on and manage in accordance with their needs. They go so far in this justification that they end up (accidently or not) recreating a lot of IRL arguments for persecution and genocide.

Bandits are interesting because much like cultists, it’s a descriptor that’s used to unperson groups of characters who would traditionally be inside the “not ontologically evil” bubble that’s applied to d&d’s protagonists. Break the law or worship the wrong god says d&d and you’re just as worth killing as the mindless minions of darkness, your only purpose to serve as a target of the protagonist’s righteous violence.

The way we get around this self-justification pitfall and get back to our cool fantasy action game is to relentlessly question authority, not only inside the game but the authors too. We have to interrogate anyone who'd show us evil and direct our outrage a certain way because if we don't we end up with crusades, pogroms, and Qanon.

With that ethical pill out of the way, I thought I’d dive into a listing of different historical groups that we might call “Bandits” at one time or another and what worldbuilding conceits their existence necessitates.

Brigands: By and large the most common sort of “bandit” you’re going to see are former soldiers left over from wars, often with a social gap between them and the people they’re raiding that prevents reintegration ( IE: They’re from a foreign land and can’t speak the local tongue, their side lost and now they’re considered outlaws, they’re mercenaries who have been stiffed on their contract). Justifying why brigands are out brigading is as easy as asking yourself “What were the most recent conflicts in this region and who was fighting them?”. There’s also something to say about how a life of trauma and violence can be hard to leave even after the battle is over, which is why you historically tend to see lots of gangs and paramilitary groups pop up in the wake of conflict.

Raiders: fundamentally the thing that has caused cultures to raid eachother since the dawn of time is sacristy. When the threat of starvation looms it’s far easier to justify potentially throwing your life away if it means securing enough food to last you and those close to you through the next year/season/day. Raider cultures develop in biomes that don’t support steady agriculture, or in times where famine, war, climate change, or disease make the harvests unreliable. They tend to target neighboring cultures that DO have reliable harvests which is why you frequently see raiders emerging from “the barbaric frontier” to raid “civilization” that just so happens to occupy the space of a reliably fertile river valley. When thinking about including raiders in your story, consider what environmental forces have caused this most recent and previous raids, as well as consider how frequent raiding has shaped the targeted society. Frequent attacks by raiders is how we get walled palaces and warrior classes after all, so this shit is important.

Slavers: Just like raiding, most cultures have engaged in slavery at one point or another, which is a matter I get into here. While raiders taking captives is not uncommon, actively attacking people for slaves is something that starts occurring once you have a built up slave market, necessitating the existence of at least one or more hierarchical societies that need more disposable workers than then their lower class is capable of providing. The roman legion and its constant campaigns was the apparatus by which the imperium fed its insatiable need for cheap slave labor. Subsistence raiders generally don’t take slaves en masse unless they know somewhere to sell them, because if you’re having trouble feeding your own people you’re not going to capture more ( this is what d&d gets wrong about monstrous humanoids most of the time).

Tax Farmers: special mention to this underused classic, where gangs of toughs would bid to see who could collect money for government officials, and then proceed to ransack the realm looking to squeeze as much money out of the people as possible. This tends to happen in areas where the state apparatus is stretched too thin or is too lighthanded to have established enduring means of funding. Tax farmers are a great one-two punch for campaigns where you want your party to be set up against a corrupt authority: our heroes defeat the marauding bandits and then oh-no, turns out they were not only sanctioned by the government but backed by an influential political figure who you’ve just punched in the coinpurse. If tax farming exists it means the government is strong enough to need a yearly budget but not so established (at least in the local region) that it’s developed a reliably peaceful method of maintaining it.

Robber Baron: Though the term is now synonymous with ruthless industrialists, it originated from the practice of shortmidned petty gentry (barons and knights and counts and the like) going out to extort and even rob THEIR OWN LANDS out of a desire for personal enrichment/boredom. Schemes can range from using their troops to shake down those who pass through their domain to outright murdering their own peasants for sport because you haven’t gotten to fight in a war for a while. Just as any greed or violence minded noble can be a robber baron so it doesn’t take that much of a storytelling leap but I encourage you to channel all your landlord hate into this one.

Rebels: More than just simple outlaws, rebels have a particular cause they’re a part of (just or otherwise) that puts them at odds with the reigning authority. They could violently support a disfavoured political faction, be acting out against a law they think is unjust, or hoping to break away from the authority entirely. Though attacks against those figures of authority are to be expected, it’s all too common for rebels to go onto praying on common folk for the sake of the cause. To make a group of rebels worth having in your campaign pinpoint an issue that two groups of people with their own distinct interests could disagree on, and then ratchet up the tension. Rebels have to be able to beleive in a cause, so they have to have an argument that supports them.

Remnants: Like a hybrid of brigands, rebels, and taxfarmers, Remnants represent a previously legitimate system of authority that has since been replaced but not yet fully disappeared. This can happen either because the local authority has been replaced by something new (feudal nobles left out after a monarchy toppling revolution) or because it has faded entirely ( Colonial forces of an empire left to their own devices after the empire collapses). Remnants often sat at the top of social structures that had endured for generations and so still hold onto the ghost of power ( and the violence it can command) and the traditions that support it. Think about big changes that have happened in your world of late, are the remnants looking to overturn it? Win new privilege for themselves? Go overlooked by their new overlords?

Art

#monsters reimagined #bandits #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ttprg #pathfinder #heavy topics #monsters reimagined

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lesbianshepard · 3 months

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there's a lot to say about the modern depictions of medusa and all, but one of my biggest pet peeves is that it also portrays perseus as some sort of macho glory seeking ass who kills women for clout. like, he was protecting his mom. his mom was being forced into an abusive marriage and he took on a seemingly impossible task to save her.

#m #i saw someone on twitter refer to him as an example of toxic masculinity #and i was like WHAT #of all the figures in greek mythology?????#like im not gonna say you cant use a cool monster lady like medusa as a symbol of female empowerment #she's cool as hell you can reimagine stuff idc #this is just a minor thing

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leisi-lilacdreams · 4 months

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i'm reading a manhwa where people are getting red eyes and it's allowing them to see monsters that live in an alt version of our world

and things are mostly ok with the 2 sides living side by side without each other's knowledge

until you do something to get the monster's attention

then they hunt you

12!donnie is sometimes shown to have red eyes

my brain made connections

the manhwa's called "prey" btw

#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #2012 tmnt #tmnt 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012 #2012 donnie #donnie tmnt #tmnt donnatello #tmnt donny #came up with a little au while doodling this #like tang shen being a miko before giving up the profession to get married #and she also saw the monsters #yoshi couldn't but believed tang shen #that's why he reacted that way to donnie #the au was a mix of xxxholic vibes with donnie being haunted by otherworldly creatures that only he can see #i even had the idea of usagi miyamoto and usagi yuichi being reimagined as the father and son oden fox cart characters from xxxholic #the 12 boys never went up top till they were 15 #donnie had no idea what he had done when he stared at something weird in the distance...and then something followed them home

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katerdaddy · 11 months

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They’re all I think about. There’s something so special about them

#cleo de nile #deuce gorgon #cleuce #monster high #katerdaddys monster high reimagined #monster high art series #mh #cleo x deuce #monster high g1

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stressfulsloth · 9 months

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Disco Elysium// Two Fishermen on an Aspidochelone, Unknown// Our Wives Under the Sea, Armfield// Unknown// Disco Elysium// Gallathea, Lyly// Sharks Feeding, Crossley// From Bodily Fear to Cosmic Horror (and back again), Miller// Disco Elysium// Early Verse, Marx// The Road, McCarthy// A Sacred and Terrible Air, Kurvitz (team ibex translation)// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium Art Book// A Sacred and Terrible Air, Kurvitz// Nona the Ninth, Muir// Sunrise With Sea Monsters, Turner// Nona the Ninth, Muir// Disco Elysium// The World's One Hope, Brecht// The Old Gentleman of Raahe// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Engraved Shell. Unknown// Capitalism and the Sea// Disco Elysium// Capitalism and the Sea//

#personal #disco elysium #tlt #web weaving #another.. mushed up quote collection #some of these works i am not a massive fan of- side-eying the road- but the quotes just. idk they ended up in the collection anyway #and somehow they fit perfectly to me #something something the sea and suffering and longing and distance #the horror of something vast and unknowable and dangerous #but also a place of peace + redemption + connection #'love and pain both play.' it's a space for both....#harry's recontextualisation of his tramatic memories of the suicie attempt in the crash where he's reimagining himself as a sea monster #and the parallel with cunoesse's response to her trauma #i couldn't fit in the screenshot but #'she regresses and pretends she's a mythological creature when she's under too much stress'#oufdhggh #pjõl #sacred and terrible air #disco rambling

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coincasual · 9 months

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monster high pencil doodle dump!!!

#some crops! i’ve been writing a few fan fictions and these are some of the doodles in the margins hehe #the top two are ari and operetta from a phantom fanfic i’ve been writing and drawing-in rough draft stage now!#and the others are from a fanfic about cleo and frankie..it’s sad but involves a lot of flashbacks to the movies/movie interpretations #so it’s been fun to reimagine/recreate some of the iconic outfits! most of the monsters are in it also- still working on wardrobe and its #also entering rough draft stage!

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asassydork · 1 month

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Should I share my new creature design outline that I’m back to working on more specifically?

I’m rewriting werewolf and vampire myths to create one creature behind both sides of it. I’m currently debunking and justifying most of them.

Idk I just thought it might be cool to share if someone was interested to see how my brain works.

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flomygosh · 6 months

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Gilda Goldstag

Prompt: Monster High Character

Day 10 of @maadsimming 31 Days of Simblreen

I know nothing about Monster High. I scrolled through the character list until I found someone I thought could be fun! I love how she turned out. Cas shots below the cut

#maadhalloween #sims 4 #thank you cc creators <3 #simblreen #ts4 screenshots #my sims #cas challenge #ts4 cas #simblreen 2023 #simblr #monster high #Gilda Goldstag #reimagined #create a sim

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raptorfae53 · 2 months

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Monster High Reimagined

Toralei stripe character bio/redesign

Toralei Stripe (they/he/she)

Harimau Jaidan daughter of the Stripe family (Chinese Malaysian-British)

(Lesbian)

A bad tempered,mistrustful weretiger adopted by a wealthy family of cat Yokai living in Britain, Toraleis had it rough. Abandoned as a young child they've been cycled through the foster system more than they can think and feel detached from their foster mother Caterina Stripe and her standoffish family as a result,being inducted into monster high on caterina’s father's warning of it being a last chance for the girl before being shipped off to a reform school. Toralei personally express their own feelings regarding all of their baggage through playing loud punk music with his band,the Hissfits (consisting of toralei themself on vocals and guitar and their cousins purrsephone and meowlody on bass and drums) much to the dismay of the half of the campus able to hear it.

Likes: punk subculture and music, playing guitar in her band,drama ,taking catnaps (often in class) and dairy products.

Dislikes: crates and enclosed spaces,people trying to tell him how to live his life,being short (5’3),digital only media and his adoptive grandfather and family (bar purrsephone and meowlody, misfits gotta stick together after all)

Killer style: Toralei's mother always insisted on her dressing "properly" to fit in with her family's smart image,since joining monster high however toralei has been rejigging these old clothes into something more "her style", that being punky Sukeban-inspired looks bound to irk her mum's sensibilities.

Familiar: Sweetfangs, a huge orange tomcat that toralei befriended during her childhood as a street kitten,who bears a passing resemblance to a sabretooth tiger and hates everybody but toralei,who in return spoils him.

Pet Peeve: Their adoptive mother, Ms Stripe's insistence on their education being top-priority. Toralei just doesn't know why she even bothers. They've never done well in school,and no students or teachers either human or monster ever put much stock in them either. In a few years both will be out of each others lives anyway,reform school or not,so why even care?

Freaky Flaw: Their self loathing. To say toralei has issues is an understatement,and said issues have manifested into a frustratingly self defeating look on life. To toralei though it's just how it is,she's had to be on their own for most of their life and fight to get what she wants without anyone helping,planting the idea early that it was simply because he wasn't worth helping,and regardless of the changes in her life recently she expects it all to be the same at monster high. After all,if the people who insisted they were there to help never did anything for toralei,why shouldn't this be true for this new lot?

Spooky Secret: Toralei has a very pronounced West Country accent (having grown up in devon) that he masks for fear it makes him sound too “farmer-y” with a pseudo-cockney one, regardless it tends to slip in times of high emotion,including during when they sing,but the fact that they're attending an American school means few are the wiser.

Dream job: Rocking out on the underground punk circuit and touring around the British isles when they're done with school,despite her Foster mothers disapproval and insistence on studying. Although another,more personal reason for this dream lifestyle being that through it toralei hopes to meet other Harimau Jaidan in the UK as well as maybe track down her birth parents on the road in-between shows.

Five Fearsome facts

Harimau Jaidan and by extent other types of werecat are a rare type of monster,even more so outside of their native Malaya and toralei has spent much of her life regardless of setting with this gnawing feeling of isolation. Even if she now has purrsephone and meowlody she's still the only one of her species at monster high,so the feeling of being alone in a crowd remains...

Toralei has a marked dislike for a lot of modern pop music,considering it too corporate and without any genuine message for her liking compared to punk and rock. (Although when their cousins aren't around he does listen to a few of his cousins Jpop CDs,don't tell anybody though…)

Aside from punk subculture,Toralei's other great love is dairy products, and beguiling their hard-edged image,ice cream,boba tea and other sweet treats rank among their all-time favourites. Toralei is also ragingly lactose intolerant but this doesn't stop him.

On top of singing and playing guitar for the Hissfits, toralei makes all of their bands merchandise ranging from badges and stickers to screen printed shirts and posters,and often incorporates some of it into her day-to-day outfits, arguing that actually the printing is intended to be wonky (it's not) and it wouldn't be properly punk if it weren't a little asymmetrical.

As a result of distrusting the model of digital only music distribution, toralei uses a lot of physical media to enjoy their music, using a physical CD player and distributing the hissfits music via burned CDs sold with the bands other merchandise. Toralei also uses said skills in making mixtapes for the people he cares most for in their life and casual Internet piracy.

Hello again everyone, I'm back with another one of these finally (and of one of my favourite monster high characters of all no less) + I'm also very close to finishing another profile so I doubt it'll be long before the next one of these is up,but anyways as usual, an explanation for my design choices:

Having previously drawn my version of toralei,whose design you can see here (hope to do more art of them and the rest of my monster high designs in the future btw) you probably already know that I've changed her monster type from a plain old werecat to a Harimau Jaidan, a were-tiger from Malayan folklore (Inspired by @jdoodlin amazing toralei design,who first introduced me to the Harimau Jaidan concept)

To keep it short, I never liked the "werecat" label, it felt a bit too artificial and I knew that there were multiple sorts of cat monsters from mythologies across the world that would make for much more interesting designs than just plain old cat people,hence why toralei is the only one of the 5 werecats to actually remain a werecat (well,weretiger). As for the others well, you'll just have to watch this space,as I have a whole smorgasbord of ideas for the twins,Catty and Catrine I can't wait to share with you all eventually in art and writing.

Anyways,hope you like this character bio,see you for the next one.

#monster high #monster high reimagined #toralei stripe #my writing

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monster-high-reimagined · 2 years

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Wave 1 eye designs

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theartifxce · 4 months

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Anna offhandedly talks to Johan about her time spent withJaromir Libsky, write Johan’s reaction.

A quiet reaction; a subtle dissonance as he inhaled a chest full of air in order to protest the direction of the conversation. But he swallowed down the words instantly. To mask his discomfort, the blond smiled effortlessly, charmingly and softly as he considered her words and the distasteful thoughts that came with it.

Outwardly, he appeared enthusiastic about her tales in how he pushed forward in his seat, clasping his hands together as they dangled off of his knees. But deep down, there was an itch, an uncomfortable burning tingle in the back of his mind that came whenever he was forced to remember him and anyone related to him.

Johan was no stranger to Jaromir Libsky. He attended one of his little puppet plays even gave him a few coins of kind gesture. He knew all about how he was almost a victim of the book readings. Yet even without the guidance of his derelict of a father, Libsky still ended up eerily similar to the Monster.

The love to tell stories - to falsify the darkest part of their hearts using the warm and inviting colors of a children's tale; they clearly were like father and son. Johan noticed it the moment he saw the young man; the damned and hauntings that dwelled in his broken stare.

So to hear he had been so close to his sister filled him with idle dread. It had been such a long time since he felt a chill travel down his spine. But the storm upon his skin washed over his composure once Nina revealed to him that she had spent many unconscious nights in the man's bed.

It almost felt like she was purposely trying to get a rise out of him.

That was when Johan nonchalantly rose from his seat, threw his hands behind his back and walked over to the window, interrupting Nina from speaking another word. Yet, with how proudly he wore his shoulders - it should have been undetected that Johan was bothered in the slightest. The blonde would take one piece of her delivery and use it to change the subject.

"...Do tell me more about this Dieter you've mentioned a few times now." A slight dip to the voice was all the transparencies he could afford. He then quickly turned, a gleaming smile etched across his visage as he continued,

"How old is he?"

#BRO HOW DARE U DO THIS TO ME #NOW I HAVE TO REMEMBER AND REIMAGINE ALL OF HIM #THREADS #PROMPTS #crack?#idk #this killd m #U MONSTER #LMAO

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dailyadventureprompts · 3 months

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Monsters Reimagined: Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Insatiable Hunger

It's been some years since I did my overhaul on the lore of the gnolls and how they embody the weird de/humanization that goes on with various monsters over d&d's history. Ever since I've had more than a few folks write in asking about how I would handle the default Gnoll God Yeenoghu, who exists in a similar state of "Kill everything that ever existed" to Orcus and a good portion of the game's other late game threats, thematically flat and not really useful for building stories around.

For a while I've avoided doing this post because I thought it might skew a little too close to my personal philosophy, and risk going from simply being influenced by my views to an outright soapbox. I personally hold that despite being part of our nature hunger is the source of the majority of human cruelty, and if society and cooperation are the tools we developed to best fight against the threat of famine, it is fear of that famine that allows the powerful to control society and secure their positions of privilege.

I've also dealt with disordered eating in a prior period of my life, alternating between neglecting my body's needs and punishing myself for needing in the first place. I'm well acquainted with hunger and the hollowing effect it can have, though I'd never claim to know it so well as someone who went hungry by anything other than choice and self hatred.

Learning to love food again saved saved my life. The joy of eating, of feeling whole and nourished, yes, but there was also the joy of making: of experimenting, improving, providing, being connected to a great tradition of cultivation which has guided our entire species.

If I was going to talk about an evil god of hunger, I was going to have to touch on all of that, and now that it's out in the open I can continue with a more thematic and narrative discussion on the beast of butchery below the cut.

What's wrong: Going by the default lore, there's not much that really separates Yeenoghu from any other chaotic evil mega-boss. He wants to kill everything in vicious ways, and encourages his followers to do the same. He's there so that the evil clerics can have someone to pray to because the objectively good gods are on the party's side and wouldn't help a bunch of cannibalistic slavers.

This is boring, we've done this song and dance before, and the only reason that there are so many demon lords/evil gods/archdevils like this is because the bioessentialism baked into the older editions of the game's lore was also a theological essentialism, and that every group had to have their own gods which perfectly embodied their ethos and there was no crossover whatsoever, themes be damned.

Normally I'd do a whole section about "what can be salvaged" from an old concept, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel right from the inset. Likewise my trick of combining multiple bits of underwritten d&d mythology to make a sturdier concept isn't going to work as most of d&d's other gods of hunger or famine are similar levels of paper thin.

How do we fix it: I want Yeenoghu to be the opposite of the path I found myself on, a hunger so great and so painful that it percludes happiness, cooperation, or even rational thought. Hunger not as a sumptuous hedonistic gluttony but a hollowing emptiness that compels violence and desperation. More than just psychopathic slaughter and gore, it is becalmed sailors drinking seawater to quench their thirst, the urban poor mixing sawdust and plaster into their food because their wages are not enough to afford grain.

This is where we get the idea of Yeenoghu as an enemy of society, not because violence is antithical to society ( I think we've learned by now how structured violence can really be) but because society fundamentally breaks down when it can't take care of the people who provide its foundations. Contrast the Beast of Butchery with one of my other favourite villainous famine spirits: Caracalla the grim trader, who embodies scarcity as a form of profit and control in to Yeenoghu's scarcity as suffering.

Into this we can also add the idea of the hungry dead, ghouls yes but also vampires, anything cursed with an eternal existence and appetites it no longer has the ability to sate. A large number of cultures across the world share the idea that the dead cannot rest while they are starving, which is why we leave offerings of food by their graves or pour out a glass to the ones we lost along the way.

On that topic, there's also a scrap of lore involving Doresain god of ghouls, who has been depicted as an on and off servant of Yeenoghu. Since I'm already remaking the mythology, I'd have Doresain act as a sort of saint or herald for the demon lord, the wicked but still partially reasonable entity who can villain monolog before the feral and all consuming demon god shows up.

Summing it all up: Yeenoghu isn't a demon you wittingly worship, it's a demon that claims you, marks you as its mouthpiece and through you seeks to consume more of the world. It gives you just enough strength to keep on living, keep on suffering, keep on filling that hole in your belly and feed it in turn.

The greatest of these mouthpieces is Doresain, an elf of ancient times who's unearthly hungers elevated him to demigod status. Known as the knawbone king, he dwells within a dread domain of the shadowfell, and is sought out only for his ability to intercede with the maw-fiend's rampages.

Signs: Unnaturally persistent hunger pangs, excessive drool and gurgling stomach noises, the growth of extra teeth in the mouth, stomachs splitting open into mouths.

Symbols: An animal with three jaws, a three tailed flail or spiked whip. A crown of knawed bones (Doresain)

Titles: Beast of butchery, the maw fiend, the knawing god

Artist

#monsters reimagined #fiend #yeenoghu #undead #deity

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ash-and-books · 2 days

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Rating: 4/5

Book Blurb:

Music says things words never can. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry I killed you.

Every night, Ceridwen Kinsley plays music on her rooftop for the spirit of her dead mother. A peaceful if odd ritual, until she witnesses a murder by something not quite human. The monstrous encounter earns her notoriety within the city and a visit from the reclusive Lord Protector Drystan Winterbourne.

Charged with protecting the backwater city of Teneboure by the king, Drystan is failing at his task, and he can’t afford another slip up. But when fate and the very monster he means to conquer bring Ceridwen to his notice, he seizes the opportunity and presents her with an offer: play music for him at his manor in exchange for the money her impoverished family desperately needs. Music eases the strain of his magic, and who better to hire than the woman whose tunes he secretly listens to at night?

At first, Ceridwen is put off by Drystan’s unkempt appearance and harsh demeanor, not to mention the odd ailment that plagues him. But as he embraces her passion for music and she draws the recluse out of his lonely tower, the two develop an unlikely attachment. Class lines begin to blur as fearful indifference shifts to unexpected desire, and Ceridwen yearns to help Drystan subdue the monster as well as provide for her family. However, the monster prowling the night isn’t their only enemy, and as terrible secrets come to light, protecting those they love may risk their lives and their hearts.

This retelling of Beauty and the Beast incorporates themes and motifs from Phantom of the Opera, and is set in a gaslamp fantasy world with strong gothic vibes. It should appeal to fans of romantic and atmospheric retellings and fairy tales by authors such as Hannah Whitten, Tessonja Odette, and Stephanie Garber.

While this is book 4 in the Reimagined Fairy Tales series, it can be read as a standalone.

Review:

A talented flutist who secretly plays music on her rooftop is suddenly drawn into the mysterious life of a reclusive duke with a monstrous secret. A unique twist on the classic Beauty and the Beast story with hints of Phantom of the Opera! Ceridwen plays her flute at night on her roof, in spirit of her mother who died. Yet on one fateful night when she is attacked she is rescued by a monster... or so she thought. The next day the famous reclusive Lord Protector Drystan Winterbourne offers her a deal: if she agrees to live in his manor and play music for him for one year he will provide her poor family with money to support them. It's too good of a deal but Ceridwen wants to provide for her family, so she agrees to the deal. Drystan might be a bit unkept and have a bit of a harsh demeanor... yet he is passionate about her music for some reason and she knows he is hiding a secret. Drystan is has only a few rules: do not enter the tower, never leave the grounds, and make sure to be in her room at night least the monster come for her. Drystan has a secret: he is the monster, or rather, one of the monsters in the town. He was cursed after being gifted with magic and now turns into a wolflike creature that he can barely control... the only thing that eases it is Ceridwen's music. Yet if he tells her the truth he risks losing the only thing that is keeping the beast at bay. Ceridwen and Drystan may be falling for each other, yet with the Drystan's many secrets... can their romance really survive when the truth gets out? I've loved reading Megan Van Dyke's reimagined fairy tale series so much and I have found that each one of them is such a unique and fun twist. I loved the gothic atmosphere and story in this on with the monster twist and the romance was sweet. It's definitely a fun read for fans of reimagined fairytales and I would absolutely recommend the series!

*Thank you Megan Van Dyke for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

#book review #fairytale reimagined #beauty and the beast #phantom of the opera #megan van dyke #the musician and the monster

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