You're Sleeping On Perytons

In a game with as long a lifespan and as extensive of a bestiary as D&D, you're inevitably going to get some monsters that become instant hits, and some that languish in obscurity. We can't all be beholders. Some of these are real stinkers and have earned their reputation. But there are far more monsters that don't get used a lot, but deserve to.

Take, for instance, the peryton. I love perytons. Murderous deer-bird hybrids who feed on human hearts. It's a batshit insane concept, and it only gets crazier when you consider that by all accounts they were completely made up as a joke by a guy writing a book on mythical creatures, only for everyone to fall for it. But in my book, it's just crazy enough of a concept to work - and if Borges was able to fool so many people into thinking they came from a real Roman legend, he clearly did a good job in capturing the feel of real mythical beasts.

And yet, I can't remember any times perytons came up in a campaign I was involved with unless I was running it. I suspect that a lot of people even forget they're there. What little discussion on them I can find usually boils down to "what is this, some gryphon variant?" or retreading ages-old jokes about how stupid D&D's C-list monsters are, often unaware of their historical precedent.

Which is a shame - because perytons are metal as fuck.

Lest we forget, these things can tear the heart out of a man's chest and eat it. As a courtship ritual. If that doesn't sound hardcore to you, I don't know what does.

With a lot of "lame" or underused D&D monsters, it isn't the monster itself that's inherently bad - the problem is more that people don't know how to use it. The peryton is a prime example of this. Perytons are terrifying. My players still talk about one peryton encounter that I ran years ago, because the experience of being stalked by a killer heart-eating deerbird was just that nerve-wracking.

If we look deeper into peryton lore, we can find that they've often been depicted as having some rudimentary level of intelligence. Maybe closer to that of an unusually clever animal, but they're much more effective if we assume they're smarter than the average deer. Now, couple that with their dietary habits, and we can see the potential unfold.

If a peryton is a smart predator, it isn't going to lunge for its prey right away. It's going to stalk its targets, making sure they're weak and vulnerable before going in for the kill. It's going to set up ambushes and corner its prey so it has nowhere to run. Remember also that its principle prey - at least a prey species that's very important to its life cycle - is human beings. As humans, our greatest asset for survival is our endurance. We don't need to expend a whole lot of energy to travel long distances. If we want to kill an animal, we're able to track it for long enough so that when it gets tired and has to lay down, we can move in for the kill. Now, imagine a species that hunts creatures that do that - and you have a frighteningly persistent predator that's willing to lie in wait and play the long game if it has to, and that executes its drives with cold, calculated efficiency to minimize the prey's chances of escape.

What doesn't hurt is that the peryton has a few things going for it in terms of stealth. It could easily stay low to the bushes when stalking its prey to hide its avian features, so that an unsuspecting target might think it was just another deer - until it was too late. So too, the fact that they're flyers allows them to gain some altitude on their prey, so they can watch them and track their movements over long distances. One bit of peryton lore from the original Book of Imaginary Beings is that until a peryton has killed a human, its shadow looks like that of a man. I feel this is a nice, creepy detail worth stealing, and it could easily be exploited by a peryton stalking its prey, positioning itself in the path of the sun so that the shadow it casts might be mistaken for that of one of the PCs. That is, until you realize that all the PCs' locations are spoken for - so where is that extra shadow coming from?

There's a couple of things I do differently with perytons to make them easier to swallow. For one, I'd like to give them the forelegs of a deer back - it makes them seem a little more dignified than just birds with deer heads. Then, there's the lore. I feel that most people just go with the "created by the experimentation of a mad wizard" backstory, like so many other monsters consisting of disparate mashed-together animal parts. But there's no reason to do that - look at all the monsters of Greek mythology with similar features, and note that none of them need such explanations. I feel like one reason why so many people mistook the peryton for a real mythical beast is because it feels like one, with the same look and feel as many of the creatures you'd see in Greek myths or medieval bestiaries. We can do better than mad wizards. We can lean into this.

In my setting, the first perytons were the children of Kerne, the god of war and the hunt. It only makes sense, given their propensity for hunting and their gruesome diets, and the fact that Kerne is associated with deer, that they would be linked somehow. Many cults of Kerne consider perytons to be sacred beasts; some temples, including the High Temple in Keldrholt, even keep sacred perytons on the premises, and they are revered for their ruthlessness and their skill in the hunt. Every living thing in the Lunar Lands is sapient (though they communicate and perceive the world in their own ways), and perytons are no exception - they worship Kerne, and honor him as their forefather and master.

Because of this, one who dishonorably kills or harms a peryton may attract the wrath of Kerne. But he is the god of war and the hunt, and he understands that one who serves him well will deal out plenty of death. To that end, one who gives a peryton a fair fight, and proves a worthy foe, may well gain Kerne's favor if they can emerge victorious.