Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Monster Manual II Art Gallery here.
[The 3.0 Monster Manual II was in some ways a weird book. It had a lot of templates, and a lot of shaky mechanics, especially for high level monsters. And there were some themes that ran through it. Conversions from older editions, refugees from the short-lived Chainmail minis game, high powered undead…
And monkeys. Lots of monkeys. Six of them, in fact. None of which ever appeared in another D&D monster book, or to my knowledge, published adventure (although there is a corner case…). So welcome to Monkey Shines, a tribute to the forgotten primates of the MMII.]
Blood Ape This creature
resembles a gorilla with reddish-brown highlights in its white fur.
Blood apes are relatives of gorillas that rely on
belligerence and magic to protect themselves from predators. They are primarily
herbivores, although they do supplement their diet with eggs and insects. Their
magical ability to increase their size, however, gives them an unwarranted
reputation as murderous carnivores. The fact that blood apes do not engage in
threat displays like gorillas do, moving rapidly to injure or kill intruders
rather than trying to scare them off, adds to this mystique.
Blood apes have less sexual dimorphism than do
mundane gorillas—both males and females are large and thick-browed. Their
social groups contain multiple males and females, with sexual relations between
different blood apes acting as social bonding opportunities. Blood apes are
good parents, and young are reared for five years before reaching maturity.
Female blood apes tend to remain with their mother’s troop, whereas the males
disperse and find other troops to join.
At their ordinary size, a blood ape stands six feet
tall at the shoulder, but this doubles under the influence of their magical
growth. Some sages hypothesize that this ability developed in order to grant
blood apes the advantages of increased size without increased resources, either
through natural processes or magical manipulation by outside forces.
Blood apes are native to the continent of Koll, where they inhabit the central jungles of that vast continent. Troops of them are given a wide berth by natives.
Shores of Swords 