 This Cyclopedia is a side project that I have had ever since I started running fantasy role playing games in 1982. Like most GMs, I suspect, I started to create my own creatures and adapt monsters from movie and television, books and comics for my own world. This list grew and changed, some being dropped and many added over the years, and every scenario and adventure I wrote ended up having at least a few of these creatures in it. As I decided to put my products and ideas out for purchase, I quickly realized how heavily they depended on the whole infrastructure for my campaign. The spells, the herbs, the treasures, the equipment, the monsters, and such all were unique to my world and required explanation for broader use. As such I found it useful to make some of this widely available for free on the internet, and available eventually for purchase in book form. That book has yet to be finished, awaiting more editing and a lot of art. At present there are some pieces of art in the book I've gotten from around the internet - I've tried to limit these to public domain pictures, if you find your art adorning a monster and wish it removed, please let me know.
In particular, the Cyclopedia is useful to have available free for others to use because of the space involved in writing up a creature. The average adventure I’ve written up has (in addition to NPCs specific to the adventure) dozens of creatures specific to the Jolrhos campaign, and that’s simply too much space and trouble for each dungeon.
 Most of the creatures in this book are either unique to the Jolrhos fantasy campaign or adaptations from other sources. I freely admit that I stole blithely and borrowed joyfully from everything from Lord of the Rings to La Morte D’Arthur. I will not hide the fact that many creatures in this work have been taken from other sources and built for Fantasy Hero. A wise man once said there is nothing new under the sun, and so it is with Fantasy – in one way or another we’re all derivative, we all borrow from others and stand on the shoulders of giants and dwarves.
Other creatures are simply my take on what has been published by others for Fantasy Hero and the Hero System rules. There are a variety of reasons for this, usually just a slight difference in design or idea. Sometimes my view of a creature varies from the source material others publish, and sometimes I simply did not agree with the method of building the creature.
Here you will find the entire Bestiary for Jolrhos, for download or a small purchase if you want to simply have a CD with all the files burned on to it.
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