Bestiary
Nothing in the Ponor comes from a fantasy manual. Its monsters come from the folklore of the Balkans: the things grandmothers in the mountains still warn children about, from shrieking drekavci to the singing rusalke.
What monsters are in Ponor?
Each stretch of the descent has its own creatures, three to a biome. As development goes on, each kind gets its own way to fight: some swarm, some charge, some cast or shoot from a distance. Every swing is telegraphed, so a hit you take is a hit you could have dodged.
The Karst
Krš · Floors 1–20
The upper caves are wet gray limestone, lined with the ossuaries of shepherds long dead. Not all of the dead stayed in their stacks.
Mrtvac
The risen dead of the shepherds’ ossuaries, slow and relentless.
Drekavac
A gaunt thing with a skull for a face that runs on all fours. Its shriek is what Kamenica hears at night.
Vukodlak
A werewolf standing taller than a man, made to rear and then charge. It joins the Karst in an upcoming update.
The Drowned VillagesIn development
Utopljena sela · Floors 21–40
Below the limestone lie whole villages the mountain swallowed long ago: roofs, walls and wells standing in black water.
Utopljenik
The drowned, pale and bloated, rising out of the flood.
Vodenjak
A water spirit that spits from the depths.
Rusalka
River maidens whose song is the last thing many travelers heard.
The RootsIn development
Korijenje · Floors 41–60
Further down, the rock gives way to the roots of the world tree, as thick as towers, and to the old groves between them.
Bauk
The bogeyman of every Balkan childhood. It hunts by sound.
Mora
The nightmare that sits on a sleeper’s chest, now awake.
Karakondžula
Small, mean and never alone: they come in swarms.
The Court of VelesIn development
Velesov dvor · Floors 61–100
At the bottom of the authored floors the caves become halls: carved, pillared, bone-colored and very old. What serves here is cleverer than anything above.
Kudlak
A dark sorcerer of the old tales, casting from the back of the hall.
Štriga
Witches that hunt in howling packs.
Div
Giants of the old songs, built to break shields.
Past floor 100 lies Nav, where the four biomes repeat with their monsters mixed together, and the deeper you go, the more wrong it gets.
Champions, elites and guardians
Not every monster is ordinary. As in Diablo II, stronger ones turn up with names and modifiers, and they carry better loot.
Champions, elites, guardians and modifiers In development
- Champions
- Packs of three to five, named in blue, sharing one modifier. Tougher and harder-hitting than their kin.
- Elites
- A monster with its own generated name, in yellow, with minions and one to six modifiers that grow with depth.
- Guardians
- The named monster at the end of a stretch of floors, in gold. A guardian always drops loot worth the fight.
- Modifiers
- Extra Fast, Extra Strong, Stone Skin, Fire, Cold or Lightning Enchanted, Teleporting and Multishot.
Which guardians wait in the Ponor?
In development: every tenth floor will end with a guardian that must die before the stairs down open. The greatest of them come straight out of folklore. Here are two; the rest you will meet on the way down.
- Psoglav
- Floor 20. A man’s body with a dog’s head, a scavenger and a coward, which makes it more dangerous, not less.
- Ala
- Floor 60. The hail demon that flattens harvests, a storm with a mouth and a hunger that never ends.
Follow the descent
Ponor is in development. Wishlist it, and get dev updates by email.