Hey, welcome back to the podcast Evil Dungeon Master Universe Podcast.

I'm your host, Evil Dungeon Master Vince, and it is Fridays, so it's time for a new podcast.

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Anyway, on to today's show and I appreciate everybody that sent me emails with feedback and suggestions on things to talk about as I cover everything in AD and D slowly but surely as this is a solo podcast.

So it's just me talking and I don't know what I want to bounce off of.

So and I like it.

I like, you know, getting my own schedule for these things.

Today we're going to flip open to the Fiend Folio.

Talk about a monster.

Today we're going to talk about the Dire Corby on page 26.

Quick overview of it.

It looks like a giant bird man with a horn on his head.

And it looks weird.

But anyway, frequency of appearing is rare.

Number of appearing is 1 to 12.

Auto class is 6, movement is 12 inches, Hit dice is 2.

So it's not that powerful of a creature, but you know, 20% chance in layer.

His treasure type is Q number of attacks is 2/26/26.

Nothing else is.

Pretty much everything is standard Nil.

He's neutral evil.

He has no defensive psionics.

The subterranean race of these huge black bipedal birds contain a ferocious contains ferocious fighters which need never check morale.

Long ago, the Dire Corbys lost the power of flight.

However, they make up for this with their great strength and ferocity, always attacking and fighting to the death.

What were once wings now have developed into two powerful arms which end in sharp, Hard Rock claws.

They fight with these claws, and each is capable of inflicting 1D6 damage on the individual.

They hunt in flocks, running down their hapless victims at the same time, emitting horrible shrieks, horrifying streaks.

They have a rudimentary language.

Their attack ride can be recognized as Doom Doom by those familiar with it.

Yeah, I had to add the sound effects cheese.

I know doom.

Dire Corbys live in a large underground cave areas.

At one time there was an open warfare between them and giant bats, but this has now become an uneasy truce.

So interesting creature here that we have man bird thing that has powerful arms that runs into battle screaming and just just relentlessly attacks non-stop anywhere from 1 to 12 of them.

So they hunt and pack.

So you're going to see at least probably 6 I'm thinking when it comes to this monster.

So let's talk about ways we could possibly use this in a campaign now.

Dire Corbys have described as fearless and loud and aggressive.

Use them like berserkers in the Dark Elf or Druger army.

They charge first, screaming Yoon Chant while absorbing damage and creating Chaos Corby's attack without retreat, so they focus on the loudest or the strongest target.

Possibly have them target the party's front liner and never stop.

So they're going to team up on your fighter or your barbarian and just go to town on getting rid of the strongest opponent they feel is necessary.

Pretty basic there, they live deep in caves, you can easily slot them in as territorial rivals to other underground factions.

Maybe they recently pushed goblins out of a mine, maybe they want some drowl that's they're gone, who knows.

A possible hook we can talk about is a faction hires the players to deal with birdmen who won't negotiate, won't flee, and won't stop fighting, making it a siege situation.

So there we go, the these bird people in the caves, they won't leave us alone and they won't negotiate, so we need you to go in there and take care of them.

So we continue in the mines.

Something simple like that.

Let's see here.

Since they hunt in flocks, use that as to your advantage.

The party sets up camphor and you know, in an old dwarven hole somewhere, everything is quiet.

Then the echo starts.

You have to do it like that.

You just automatically have to do it like that.

They attack in waves, trying to overwhelm the players and then drag off the weakest.

So imagine you're in this, you know, stronghold thing and you're like, OK, we're going to rest for the night and all of a sudden you're damn damn any of these bird like people just start attacking, but then they leave.

It's like, and then they come back again with more and then they start fighting and they start fighting and distracting the fighter and, you know, the Ranger, for example.

And then they come back and they sneak and they grab your magic user 'cause they, you know, they're probably going to think the magic user is the weakest person there and drag him off to go eat him or something disgusting like that.

Or maybe they find, I don't know, a lone Corby by itself and they, you know, they go after it because it's a monster and then he goes something like or something worse.

Now they find out the Corbys were actually fleeing something more dangerous than them.

There's a more powerful disgusting monster in the in The Cave system.

Who knows, maybe you could try to grab one and tame one as a pet or a guard.

It just never speaks, it just stares things and then when things go bad it remembers the word.

I'm sorry, I got to stop that, I'm sorry.

What if the ancient Corbys used to speak more than one word?

Maybe a hidden chamber deep in the underdark shows more murals of these people carved into the walls.

The word doom was part of a forgotten language of power.

The players awaken something trying to uncover what it means.

These are just some ideas that we can use with these bird like men to actually, you know, get the campaign moving off the ground.

They can't, they just they don't have to be mindless attacking birds or bird men, for example.

They could have some strategy.

Yeah, their intelligence is low, but maybe there is a couple smart ones.

Maybe there's a couple ones that actually can speak a little bit more than just doom.

I'm not going to do it again, don't worry.

And the party has to find this one.

Maybe they have a hook to go into The Cave to find this mysterious leader of the Corby and negotiate with it or talk with it and find out more about it.

Maybe they're there because they're that's their homeland and you know, people are invading it.

Who knows?

There's so many possibilities you could do with this creature just based off of this description.

You don't have to actually follow verbatim if you want.

These creatures can, you know, shoot fire out of their ass, for example.

And you know, this could be a big surprise to the party if they turned around and there's a big fireball coming out of his ass.

But hey, you're the DM, you can do whatever you want.

That's how I used to design my creatures.

I used to have goblins that would shock people when they grabbed them, call them shock goblins.

Instead of attacking with their claws or whatever weapon, they would run up and try to touch someone and they'd shock them.

Do like one, do 4 points of damage every time.

It was kind of interesting because the party's like, what the hell?

But anyway, just just an example of things you could do with just your imagination because you're the dungeon master.

You rule the book, not the other way around.

A lot of people forget that.

But yeah, tell what you think about the Dire Corby and put in the comments below, like subscribe, follow if you're on Spotify, Apple, whatever.

Pocket Casts rate the podcast as well if you don't mind.

Appreciate that.

With that said, I'm going to head out.

Keep it original, keep it old school.

Goodnight and God bless everybody.