Blogstones

  • 9 December 2011: first post!
  • 2 March 2012: the 1,000th post is the one you’re looking at
  • 26 March: 2,500th post
  • 25 May: 4,000th post
  • 10 June: 5,000th post
  • 26 June: 6,000th post
  • 9 October: 7,500th post, and over 5,000 views too!
  • November is the first month in which I managed to put up at least one post every day
  • 10 December: 10,000th post
  • 8 January 2013: Over 100 page views on one day… thank you Sweden for 76 of the 114 total views!
  • 14 January: WordPress put together a spiffy Annual Report. I like this feature! I’m looking forward to the 2013 report.
  • 17 January: This blog has surpassed the FR Wiki in number of articles. Note that they have some stuff I don’t have, and vice versa. Also, we’re not really in competition; our priorities are different. But this is definitely a milestone, because regardless of the details FR Wiki is kinda “the man” in terms of Realms-related wikis. So I’ll admit I’m patting myself on the back a bit. The FR Wiki has been around since October of 2005 and has had hundreds if not thousands of contributors. This blog? Just me, poking around since the last couple weeks of 2011. 11,762 posts and I still have a bottomless well of stuff to write about. Come at me, Realms!
  • 15 February: 12,500th post … and I have 16 followers. Followers are awesome!
  • 2 March: This is the end of a streak of 134 consecutive days of at least one post per day. Feels like a big deal when your attention span is as unpredictable as mine.
  • 8 March: 2500+ posts in each of three categories: Geography, Monsters, and NPCs.
  • 29 April: I rediscovered Morrowind and got distracted, so the expansion of the encyclowikiblog has slowed for a couple months, but I’m working on a comeback.
  • 26 May: 861 page views in one day! That’s just awesome. Thank you, to everyone who comes back.
  • 21 September: The slowdown lasted longer than I’d hoped, because I’ve also been checking out dokuwiki… it’s a spiffy little offline wiki. I’m fairly sure that I like WordPress better, but the wiki has some big advantages. Like linking… linking is a lot easier on a wiki, which isn’t surprising since WordPress isn’t designed to be a wiki. But I’m still a WP fan. Leave comments about anything you’d like to see more information on!
  • 7 October: 15,000th post. This milestone deserves something cooler than the trident weapon proficiency feat, but hey… that’s where I was at that moment.

Yay, milestones.

Gargoyle

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

An earthy monstrous humanoid.


Appearance

Size

The gargoyle is described in the Monster Manual. Basically it’s a living statue. The point of this section is to outline how big it is and how much it weighs.

The gargoyle is a monstrous humanoid, not a construct, so it’s not carved, and it’s not totally accurate to think of it as proportional to a human male. However, it does have two arms, two legs, and a head (plus wings and a tail) and I’m going to look at it as a human male with 25% extra body mass which accounts for the extra appendages.

It’s convenient to equate gargoyle height and HD, so that’s what I’m going to do. At 4 HD, a gargoyle is 4 ft tall and Medium size. At 8 HD, it’s 8 ft tall and Large size.

I see gargoyles being made of granite. Granite has a density/weight of 2691 kg per cubic meter, so a certain amount of granite is roughly 2.7 times the weight of an identical quantity of human flesh and bone.

The process for finding a reasonable weight for a gargoyle is pretty straightforward. Start with the weight of a healthy human male of the appropriate height… 180 lbs at 6 ft tall, for example. Add 25% for the wings, tail, and horns: 225 lbs. Finally, multiply by 2.7 because it’s all made of granite: a 6-foot gargoyle should weight about 600 lbs.

Here’s a more complete table.

Ht (ft) Wt (lbs)
4 265
5 415
6 600
7 825
8 1075
9 1350
10 1675
11 2000
12 2400
13 2800
14 3250
15 3750
16 4250
What You See
Art Review

Visually, there’s plenty of inspiration on Google, but I’m thinking here more specifically about humanoid gargoyles. Here’s one example from deviantArt, and this one is also good.


Climitat


Variations

Gargoyles are related to kapoacinth.


Notable Individuals

In Faerûn
Elsewhere

Sources

Primary Sources
Passing Mention

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Caryatid Column

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

At a Glance

A construct.

The caryatid column is described in the 3e Fiend Folio. Basically, it’s a stone golem with some special abilities. The point of this post is to outline how big it is and how much it weighs.

As noted in the FF, the caryatid column is crafted from marble. I assume that it’s shaped to be proportional to a human woman; most giants are also proportional to humans but you could make variant columns which resemble dwarves or orcs or skeletons if you wanted to… that would change these numbers.

Height

Using the blackstone gigant as a precedent, I suggest making caryatid column height equal to HD. This means that the caryatid column’s range of 6-18 HD translates to a range of 6 ft to 18 ft height.

Weight

Solid marble has a density/weight of about 2563 kg per cubic meter (that’s 160 lbs per cubic foot). A human woman, standing 6 feet tall, has a volume of about 0.067 cubic meters (2.4 cubic ft) which means a marble woman weighs 378 lbs. A 6 ft tall woman made of uh, womanstuff, on the other hand, should be somewhere around 147 lbs, which supports our knowledge that marble statues are heavier than people.

Column

As described in the FF, a caryatid column can shapechange into a simple, featureless, stone column. The dimensions of this column logically should depend on the volume of the stone lady.

Note that this column assumes that the caryatid column is carved in the image of a nude woman. If the column is carved to include a skirt or dress, it will have significantly more volume (and weight), and the column form will have a larger diameter.

Quarried

Finally, the FF also notes that the column must be carved out of a single block of marble. It might not be relevant to most adventurers but it could be a fun bit of trivia to know the size of the block needed to create these magnificent women.

So here’s how the numbers work out.

Ht (ft) Wt (lbs) Column Quarried
6 378 8 inches diameter, 6 ft tall 2 ft W x 1 ft D x 6 ft H: 12 cu ft (1920 lbs)
7 514 9 inches diameter, 7 ft tall 3 ft W x 2 ft D x 7 ft H: 42 cu ft (6720 lbs)
8 672 10 inches diameter, 8 ft tall 3 ft W x 2 ft D x 8 ft H: 48 cu ft (7680 lbs)
9 850 10 inches diameter, 9 ft tall 3 ft W x 2 ft D x 9 ft H: 54 cu ft (8640 lbs)
10 1050 11 inches diameter, 10 ft tall 4 ft W x 2 ft D x 10 ft H: 80 cu ft (12800 lbs)
11 1270 12 inches diameter, 11 ft tall 4 ft W x 2 ft D x 11 ft H: 88 cu ft (14080 lbs)
12 1512 12 inches diameter, 12 ft tall 4 ft W x 2 ft D x 12 ft H: 96 cu ft (15360 lbs)
13 1774 13 inches diameter, 13 ft tall 5 ft W x 3 ft D x 13 ft H: 195 cu ft (31200 lbs)
14 2058 13 inches diameter, 14 ft tall 5 ft W x 3 ft D x 14 ft H: 210 cu ft (33600 lbs)
15 2362 13 inches diameter, 15 ft tall 5 ft W x 3 ft D x 15 ft H: 225 cu ft (36000 lbs)
16 2688 14 inches diameter, 16 ft tall 6 ft W x 3 ft D x 16 ft H: 288 cu ft (46080 lbs)
17 3034 14 inches diameter, 17 ft tall 6 ft W x 3 ft D x 17 ft H: 306 cu ft (48960 lbs)
18 3402 15 inches diameter, 18 ft tall 6 ft W x 3 ft D x 18 ft H: 324 cu ft (51840 lbs)

Of course the height range is only a guideline. There could be smaller and larger columns.

Ht (ft) Wt (lbs) Column Quarried
1 10 3 inches diameter, 1 ft tall 1 ft W x 1 ft D x 1 ft H: 1 cu ft (160 lbs)
2 42 5 inches diameter, 2 ft tall 1 ft W x 1 ft D x 2 ft H: 2 cu ft (320 lbs)
3 94 6 inches diameter, 3 ft tall 1 ft W x 1 ft D x 3 ft H: 3 cu ft (480 lbs)
4 168 7 inches diameter, 4 ft tall 2 ft W x 1 ft D x 4 ft H: 8 cu ft (1280 lbs)
5 262 8 inches diameter, 5 ft tall 2 ft W x 1 ft D x 5 ft H: 10 cu ft (1600 lbs)
32 10751 20 inches diameter, 32 ft tall 11 ft W x 6 ft D x 32 ft H: 2112 cu ft (337,920 lbs)
64 43003 28 inches diameter, 64 ft tall 22 ft W x 11 ft D x 64 ft H: 15488 cu ft (2,478,080 lbs)
96 96758 34 inches diameter, 96 ft tall 32 ft W x 16 ft D x 96 ft H: 49152 cu ft (7,864,320 lbs)

Sources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.