Tomas Whitecloud on northern myth, respectful sourcing, and rights-clean creature design.
Tomas Whitecloud is careful about the word "monster." Much of what fantasy games file under bestiary, he points out, started as story — beings with rules, relationships, and reasons. His creature work tries to keep that intact rather than flattening it into a stat block.
That care shows in his process. Whitecloud separates the figures that belong to specific living traditions, which he leaves alone, from the broader northern imagery that's his to reinterpret. "Respectful sourcing isn't a disclaimer," he says. "It's deciding what's not yours to sell."
On the Codex, every piece he lists is rights-clean and credited by name — no scraped references, no AI-laundered work. For him that's the whole point: a named human standing behind the image, accountable for where it came from.
He hopes GMs use the work as an invitation to ask better questions about the worlds they run. "A good creature," he says, "should make the table curious, not just cautious."