From the foreword:
When the Mazes & Minotaurs roleplaying game first came up in 1972 (gee ! Is that ten years already ?), it included a selection of 92 folks, monsters, beasts, spirits and animates… then came Men & Monsters, which added 21 new beings (including the Tragic Floating Head, my all-time personal favorite) to the Maziverse. Then, over the years, dozens – no, myriads - of new creatures appeared in various adventure modules as well as in the ever-popular Creatures Compendium column of Griffin magazine.
The book you are holding in your hands compiles the very best of these contributions, along with a hefty dose of never-published-before material, for a grand total of exactly 100 creatures, hence the title. Hekatowhat, you ask ? Well, for those who (like me) never really got into Ancient Greek, Hekatoteratos apparently means something like « the book of 100 monsters » - and it was definitely a more stylish than our other ideas for a title, such as the very dull « Manual of Monsters » (my own suggestion), the somewhat pompous « Mythic Bestiary » or the improbable « Monstropaedia » (yes, Dave, that was your idea).
Rather than being presented as an A-Z list of 100 creatures, this astonishing assembly of dreadful denizens and bizarre beings has been divided into ten sections, with ten entries in each section.