The Vorpal Tribble
2009-06-22, 03:41 PM
Glöi
http://th05.deviantart.net/fs25/300W/f/2008/113/d/a/The_Exquisite_Corpse_by_EddieTheYeti.jpg
The glöi, also known as Charnels or Gutfolk, are amongst the most misunderstood and reviled races in the multiverse. They seem a macabre, alien race until one attempts to understand their customs and ways through the eyes of their heritage. They are scavengers whose origins found them in the bowels of much larger carnivores, where they hid in the stomachs, feasting on the swallowed meat, or causing the carnivore to regurgitate the meal, and the glöi, where it could feed outside the host.
To a glöi the odor of a festering corpse is alike to a fine boutique, and a field of bodies a grove of wildflowers. Ripening cadavers, pustules and bones have a certain aesthetic beauty to them that few if any other races share. Their art reflects this with bone carvings, flesh sculptures, deadpools and fungus arrangements of horrible skill.
Personality: Though the range of personalities vary as widely as any human, glöi tend to be a surprisingly optimistic and philosophical people, and are masters of black humor. They see death and life as alternating shades of existence that goes from one to the other, much like day and night, with neither being an end.
Physical Description: Glöi bodies are much like that of a snake, but flatter and wider, and have strange crimps and twists in it as if their spine at several times along their length formed a swiveling joint. At the base four short, springy legs with a single retractable gripping claw grows. Dozens of much smaller legs continue up the side of the body, though appear mainly atrophied and are capable of very limited movement.
Their faces are strange and idiotic seeming, with tiny black eyes, one on each side of a round, circular head built around an enormous mouth. The teeth of this mouth are made for tearing, but are extremely tiny. A long tongue, covered in barbs, can be extended from this maw. A beard of what appears as a dozen meter-long, feathery moth antennae extend from the base of their throat that move with prehensile ease. They have a wiry strength to them, and can be braided together in a blink to make a pair of arms that are every bit as strong as a man's and much more dextrous.
Alignment: Glöi tend towards no particular alignment, depending on the individual and society it grew from.
Lands: Glöi prefer lands that are the hotter and humid the better, preferring balmy swamps and misty jungles. They can tolerate colder climates, but are intensely uncomfortable.
Settlements: Glöi prefer to craft their homes to be partially above and below. Though they use mud frequently, they prefer bone and scale, and often form large hunting parties for gathering building materials, much like loggers set out to cut trees. The rest of the remains are put in literal charnel houses to age and gain flavor. The wealthier Glöi make their homes from entire mummified remains of enormous beasts, such as dinosaur and similiar. Dragons are the preferred corpses, and it is said that it is within the guts of draconic hosts the glöi originally came to sentience. As such, glöi residences are surrounded by a miasma of putrescence that is only possible by the careful cultivation of decay. As often as not glöi tend to be nomadic, only settling for short periods while happening upon a particularly great beast's death or to lay eggs. Some glöi even raise dead to follow them as both food and protection, and serve as pack creatures.
Glöi eggs have no yolks, so they are laid en masse in pools of liquefied flesh, absorbing through the porous membranes. Glöi larvae are aquatic and mindless for their first year, eating anything, alive or dead, even one another. After this they become to develop a true intelligence, at which point the maggots are rescued from their cannibalistic brethren and into new pools of children to be taught and cared for by the settlement in general. As the maggots begin to mature, they grow a cocoon-like sack around themselves of great durability. This sack smells enticing to predators, and the settlement as a whole tries to attract a huge beast to come and literally eat their young. They remain growing in the belly of this beast, the sack slowly being eaten away by the stomach acid of their host, the only substance that seems capable of doing so. The entire brood then hatches, and feed upon the eatings of their host. Eventually it weakens and dies. The brood then emerges, having all the materials ready for the beginning of a new settlement.
Glöi have no genders, and can in fact lay eggs and produce offspring without the need of a mate, but this tends to be taboo and the individual shunned.
Power Groups: Glöi society is oddly normal, with bullies and subordinates, iconoclasts and individualists. Though they work together to raise their young, it is also quite normal for groups to break off and start their own society. Leaders tend to be the elders of the community, though can be thrown down by a stronger or more well liked younger glöi.
Beliefs: The glöi believe that all life grows upon the multiverse like mold on a piece of meat, and that we are all living off the flesh of a dead, plane-spanning deity. Someday, after all has been consumed and everything has died, the released life force will reawaken the god and its followers, and they will become one with it.
Languages: Glöi. Bonus Languages: Common, Draconic, and Giant. Glöi language sounds like a mixture between a stuck pig and a phlegmy wheeze with buzzing overtones and sudden series of strangled glottal stops.
Names: Glöi are often named after their eating habits with family names based off the creature within which they grew, with special titles given depending on their accomplishments.
Glöi Racial Traits
Con +2, Dex +2, Cha -4: Glöi are a race of hardy contortionists but they come across as intensely unpleasant to almost all other known species.
* Monstrous Humanoid: Glöi are not subject to spells or effects that affect humanoids only, such as charm person or dominate person.
* Small: As a Small creature, a Glöi gains a +1 bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but it uses smaller weapons than humans use, and its lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character.
* Glöi base land speed is 20 feet. They gain a Burrow speed of 5 feet when moving through dead flesh.
* Darkvision: A glöi has darkvision out to 60 feet.
* Parasitic Heritage: A glöi's nature is such that some healing spells are confused by them. Glöi can be cured of diseases with spells, but take 1d6 points of damage per 2 levels of the spell. For instance, Remove Disease, a 3rd level spell, deals 1d6 points of damage, and Heal, a 6th level spell deals 3d6 points of damage (though in the case of Heal, may heal the damage it deals, though it heals pre-existing damage first). Glöi casters have their own versions that does not deal damage, however, when this version is used on non-glöi they are considered 2 caster levels lower for counter casting purposes and similar.
* Charnel Nose (Ex): A glöi gains the scent ability within 30 feet for the purpose of detecting dead flesh if it has been dead for more than an hour. If the corpse is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. When a glöi detects a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed - only its presence somewhere within range. The glöi can take a move action to note the direction of the scent. Whenever the glöi comes within 5 feet of the source, the glöi pinpoints the source’s location.
They can tell within up to half a day how long a creature has been dead by smell alone and can 'smell through' any Bluff or Disguise check a creature may make to appear dead.
* Gutborn (Ex): A glöi is immune to digestive acids and the bludgeoning damage of a creature's gizzard (though other acids and bludgeoning damage still affects them). As such, unless the creature's stomach deals other kinds of damage, such as tearing or has a stomach full of fire, the glöi is completely immune to being swallowed whole. In addition, they can tickle the creature's inner orifices in such a way as to cause a gagging reflex. The creature must succeed on a Constitution save equal to the glöi's Heal check or expell the contents of it's stomach. The glöi gains a +10 racial bonus to Heal for the purpose of causing this reflex.
* Irongut: A glöi is immune to all ingested and inhaled poisons and disease.
* Rasping Tongue: A glöi can make a secondary attack with it's barbed tongue, dealing 1d4 subdual damage.
* Favored Class: Fighter
* Level Adjustment: +1
http://th05.deviantart.net/fs25/300W/f/2008/113/d/a/The_Exquisite_Corpse_by_EddieTheYeti.jpg
The glöi, also known as Charnels or Gutfolk, are amongst the most misunderstood and reviled races in the multiverse. They seem a macabre, alien race until one attempts to understand their customs and ways through the eyes of their heritage. They are scavengers whose origins found them in the bowels of much larger carnivores, where they hid in the stomachs, feasting on the swallowed meat, or causing the carnivore to regurgitate the meal, and the glöi, where it could feed outside the host.
To a glöi the odor of a festering corpse is alike to a fine boutique, and a field of bodies a grove of wildflowers. Ripening cadavers, pustules and bones have a certain aesthetic beauty to them that few if any other races share. Their art reflects this with bone carvings, flesh sculptures, deadpools and fungus arrangements of horrible skill.
Personality: Though the range of personalities vary as widely as any human, glöi tend to be a surprisingly optimistic and philosophical people, and are masters of black humor. They see death and life as alternating shades of existence that goes from one to the other, much like day and night, with neither being an end.
Physical Description: Glöi bodies are much like that of a snake, but flatter and wider, and have strange crimps and twists in it as if their spine at several times along their length formed a swiveling joint. At the base four short, springy legs with a single retractable gripping claw grows. Dozens of much smaller legs continue up the side of the body, though appear mainly atrophied and are capable of very limited movement.
Their faces are strange and idiotic seeming, with tiny black eyes, one on each side of a round, circular head built around an enormous mouth. The teeth of this mouth are made for tearing, but are extremely tiny. A long tongue, covered in barbs, can be extended from this maw. A beard of what appears as a dozen meter-long, feathery moth antennae extend from the base of their throat that move with prehensile ease. They have a wiry strength to them, and can be braided together in a blink to make a pair of arms that are every bit as strong as a man's and much more dextrous.
Alignment: Glöi tend towards no particular alignment, depending on the individual and society it grew from.
Lands: Glöi prefer lands that are the hotter and humid the better, preferring balmy swamps and misty jungles. They can tolerate colder climates, but are intensely uncomfortable.
Settlements: Glöi prefer to craft their homes to be partially above and below. Though they use mud frequently, they prefer bone and scale, and often form large hunting parties for gathering building materials, much like loggers set out to cut trees. The rest of the remains are put in literal charnel houses to age and gain flavor. The wealthier Glöi make their homes from entire mummified remains of enormous beasts, such as dinosaur and similiar. Dragons are the preferred corpses, and it is said that it is within the guts of draconic hosts the glöi originally came to sentience. As such, glöi residences are surrounded by a miasma of putrescence that is only possible by the careful cultivation of decay. As often as not glöi tend to be nomadic, only settling for short periods while happening upon a particularly great beast's death or to lay eggs. Some glöi even raise dead to follow them as both food and protection, and serve as pack creatures.
Glöi eggs have no yolks, so they are laid en masse in pools of liquefied flesh, absorbing through the porous membranes. Glöi larvae are aquatic and mindless for their first year, eating anything, alive or dead, even one another. After this they become to develop a true intelligence, at which point the maggots are rescued from their cannibalistic brethren and into new pools of children to be taught and cared for by the settlement in general. As the maggots begin to mature, they grow a cocoon-like sack around themselves of great durability. This sack smells enticing to predators, and the settlement as a whole tries to attract a huge beast to come and literally eat their young. They remain growing in the belly of this beast, the sack slowly being eaten away by the stomach acid of their host, the only substance that seems capable of doing so. The entire brood then hatches, and feed upon the eatings of their host. Eventually it weakens and dies. The brood then emerges, having all the materials ready for the beginning of a new settlement.
Glöi have no genders, and can in fact lay eggs and produce offspring without the need of a mate, but this tends to be taboo and the individual shunned.
Power Groups: Glöi society is oddly normal, with bullies and subordinates, iconoclasts and individualists. Though they work together to raise their young, it is also quite normal for groups to break off and start their own society. Leaders tend to be the elders of the community, though can be thrown down by a stronger or more well liked younger glöi.
Beliefs: The glöi believe that all life grows upon the multiverse like mold on a piece of meat, and that we are all living off the flesh of a dead, plane-spanning deity. Someday, after all has been consumed and everything has died, the released life force will reawaken the god and its followers, and they will become one with it.
Languages: Glöi. Bonus Languages: Common, Draconic, and Giant. Glöi language sounds like a mixture between a stuck pig and a phlegmy wheeze with buzzing overtones and sudden series of strangled glottal stops.
Names: Glöi are often named after their eating habits with family names based off the creature within which they grew, with special titles given depending on their accomplishments.
Glöi Racial Traits
Con +2, Dex +2, Cha -4: Glöi are a race of hardy contortionists but they come across as intensely unpleasant to almost all other known species.
* Monstrous Humanoid: Glöi are not subject to spells or effects that affect humanoids only, such as charm person or dominate person.
* Small: As a Small creature, a Glöi gains a +1 bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but it uses smaller weapons than humans use, and its lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character.
* Glöi base land speed is 20 feet. They gain a Burrow speed of 5 feet when moving through dead flesh.
* Darkvision: A glöi has darkvision out to 60 feet.
* Parasitic Heritage: A glöi's nature is such that some healing spells are confused by them. Glöi can be cured of diseases with spells, but take 1d6 points of damage per 2 levels of the spell. For instance, Remove Disease, a 3rd level spell, deals 1d6 points of damage, and Heal, a 6th level spell deals 3d6 points of damage (though in the case of Heal, may heal the damage it deals, though it heals pre-existing damage first). Glöi casters have their own versions that does not deal damage, however, when this version is used on non-glöi they are considered 2 caster levels lower for counter casting purposes and similar.
* Charnel Nose (Ex): A glöi gains the scent ability within 30 feet for the purpose of detecting dead flesh if it has been dead for more than an hour. If the corpse is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. When a glöi detects a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed - only its presence somewhere within range. The glöi can take a move action to note the direction of the scent. Whenever the glöi comes within 5 feet of the source, the glöi pinpoints the source’s location.
They can tell within up to half a day how long a creature has been dead by smell alone and can 'smell through' any Bluff or Disguise check a creature may make to appear dead.
* Gutborn (Ex): A glöi is immune to digestive acids and the bludgeoning damage of a creature's gizzard (though other acids and bludgeoning damage still affects them). As such, unless the creature's stomach deals other kinds of damage, such as tearing or has a stomach full of fire, the glöi is completely immune to being swallowed whole. In addition, they can tickle the creature's inner orifices in such a way as to cause a gagging reflex. The creature must succeed on a Constitution save equal to the glöi's Heal check or expell the contents of it's stomach. The glöi gains a +10 racial bonus to Heal for the purpose of causing this reflex.
* Irongut: A glöi is immune to all ingested and inhaled poisons and disease.
* Rasping Tongue: A glöi can make a secondary attack with it's barbed tongue, dealing 1d4 subdual damage.
* Favored Class: Fighter
* Level Adjustment: +1