Kyōrinrin
Image © Matthew Meyer, accessed at Yokai.com here
[Not gonna lie, as the kyōrinrin was being written, I realized it was becoming increasingly autobiographical. No secret to anyone who's been around for any length of time, but I love books and I love reading. When I was a kid, I was really good at making stuff up and seeming authoritative about it (although now I'm much better at admitting when I don't know). And there certainly were times when I was a teacher when I really wished I could just beam information directly into a recalcitrant student's head instead of telling them for the 10th time that ChatGPT was just going to regurgitate garbage and all the information they needed is actually in the text I assigned them, but noOOoo... wait, where was I?]
Kyōrinrin CR 8 LN Construct (tsukumogami) This creature appears to be something like a miniature dragon made out of paper. Multiple scrolls make up its serpentine body and long flexible arms, all covered in writing. It wears tasseled scrolls on its head like a wig, and the covers of books like a kimono.
A kyōrinrin is a tsukumogami formed from neglected scrolls and books. Regardless of the original format of the text, upon creation it tears and joins its pages together to form a sinuous, snake-like body with long arms and a beaky head. Kyōrinrin are motivated by knowledge, both to collect more of it and to encourage others to embrace it. They tend to lair in abandoned libraries and scriptoriums, but any place they take up residence will become a library of sorts, as the kyōrinrin fills it with the books they have collected. Kyōrinrin hate illiteracy and incuriosity, and will force people to read upon threat of violence if their temper is up.
Kyōrinrin will enter combat against inveterate book haters, or to defend their stashes of books and scrolls from vandalism or theft. They are experts with using magical scrolls, and they typically carry a number of scrolls for offense and defense. Their natural attacks are fairly weak, but bear a couple of nasty surprises. Their bite is essentially a scissoring paper cut, and inflicts deep wounds that bleed for a long time. Kyōrinrin use prestidigitation spells to clean any pages that might be marred with the bloodstains that result. A kyōrinrin can psychically force the contents of the texts making up its body into the head of the creature they grab, which both overwhelms the creature’s senses and imparts their knowledge. This intimate knowledge of their text lasts only briefly—a creature that intends to employ a kyōrinrin’s teachings in the long term usually has to read them the old fashioned way. Most kyōrinrin are happy to allow themselves to be read, as long as their readers are polite.
Most kyōrinrin has personalities that are best described as “passionately nerdy”. They want other creatures to learn, particularly about their area of expertise. Other monsters, particularly tsukumogami, view them as sages worthy of respect, although often they only listen to the parts of a kyōrinrin’s teachings they want to hear. For their part, kyōrinrin are often embarrassed to admit that they don’t know something, and may simply make something up if at a loss for an answer. Kyōrinrin get along famously with globgogabgalabs, and the two creatures may share a library lair for years or decades.
