[AD&D: 2nd] On Humane Rotgrub Farming

[babus]

Hello all, I recently acquired a jar of 64 Rotgrubs, held in stasis until such a time that the jar is broken or otherwise unsealed. Now, while the logical thing to do would be to toss the thing into the nearest volcano, I am pondering another option.

Specifically, I have a mind to produce many many more of them and fire them from our base at attacking enemy armies using cannons of some form or another. The only problem is that my character is Chaotic Neutral, and breeding the things normally takes a living more or less humanoid body which for reasons obvious tends to expire during the process.

As such, my plan is to pay Trolls a proper wage for the use of their time (this is a setting where that may actually be possible), and use their invulnerability as a continual food source/breeding ground for the Grubs. The only problem with this part is that they'd still experience pain, and most importantly, I need a way to clean them so they can take coffee breaks. For the first issue, I'm looking for a spell that makes pain disappear, and for the second, I'm going to need to figure out if protection from fire (and any similar spells) protects the parasites in a person's body as well as the person under the effect of the spell, as if it doesn't, the Troll can simply be protected and the Rotgrubs purified from the body via careful application of fire, allowing them to play Troll Basketball in the break room or go on vacation to visit their families before returning to work.

The actual dynamics of the harvesting chamber are fairly simple, but I'm not having much luck finding a spell that can lessen or eliminate pain. Any suggestions?

[Telok]

Pay the trolls for thier limbs.

In trollish something that costs "an arm and a leg" is simply painfully expensive rather than cripplingly expensive like it is for the rest of us. It's even possible you might be able to pay them in room and board, if it's a nice room and the food is good.

Alternately find someone willing to cast Stone to Flesh on a regular basis.

[Slipperychicken]

I don't play 2e, but why can't you just feed animals to the Rotgrubs?

From what I understand, all they need to eat is exposed skin and a heart.

[Alejandro]

Rot grubs can live and breed in heaps of offal and dung.

So, you need a controlled access area into which that crap (literally) is dumped, your grub colony is set up, and you commission a stone or iron golem to do the harvesting.

[Lapak]

Since it sounds like you may be concerned about alignment (worried about the trolls' suffering, for example) I feel compelled to point out that using rot grubs as weapons of war may itself be a substantially Evil act depending on the DM and/or group.

(That and I'm not seeing how the grubs would survive being fired out of a cannon.)

[babus]

Since it sounds like you may be concerned about alignment (worried about the trolls' suffering, for example) I feel compelled to point out that using rot grubs as weapons of war may itself be a substantially Evil act depending on the DM and/or group.

(That and I'm not seeing how the grubs would survive being fired out of a cannon.)

Well, the grubs themselves are mindless, we'd give fair warning to anyone approaching the keep with aggression in mind that we had a method of delivering horrible death and that it was their own fault if they ignored it, and also Rotgrubs can feast on dead flesh as well, which should make undead a valid target. As far as propulsion, I have any number of delivery systems in mind that should preserve the grubs through the trip.

@Alejandro
The DM said that they require a living body to breed in and more specifically that the heartbeat of the creature they're infesting is needed to set them into a breeding frenzy. I suspect he made thi- homebrewed this element, but I can work with it.

@Telok
Ooh, Flesh to Stone could work for cleaning them if Protection from Fire is a no-go. Room and board would be fine, but I was given the impression the breeding process requires the entire body, so sadly they'd need to hang out in the pools, likely with a device to suspend their head above the water.

@Slipperychicken
The DM specified at least vaguely humanoid, sadly.

[Lapak]

Well, the grubs themselves are mindless, we'd give fair warning to anyone approaching the keep with aggression in mind that we had a method of delivering horrible death and that it was their own fault if they ignored it, and also Rotgrubs can feast on dead flesh as well, which should make undead a valid target. As far as propulsion, I have any number of delivery systems in mind that should preserve the grubs through the trip.If King Tyrant the first announces that anyone who speaks against his rule will be horribly tortured to death in the public square, his heads-up does not make the torture a non-evil act. :smallwink: I wasn't worried about the grubs. I'm not saying that firing Rot Grubs at an enemy army would definitely be evil in all games, but I'm willing to bet a lot of DMs would give it a good hard look. I mean, suppose you had a prisoner up for execution and you could either chop his head off with a single clean axe blow or you could infect him deliberately with Rot Grubs. Any PC who chose the grubs would probably get the people around him awfully nervous. All the reasons that you're considering as a good threat are the very reasons that make it questionable alignment-wise! :smallsmile:

[babus]

If King Tyrant the first announces that anyone who speaks against his rule will be horribly tortured to death in the public square, his heads-up does not make the torture a non-evil act. :smallwink: I wasn't worried about the grubs. I'm not saying that firing Rot Grubs at an enemy army would definitely be evil in all games, but I'm willing to bet a lot of DMs would give it a good hard look. I mean, suppose you had a prisoner up for execution and you could either chop his head off with a single clean axe blow or you could infect him deliberately with Rot Grubs. Any PC who chose the grubs would probably get the people around him awfully nervous. All the reasons that you're considering as a good threat are the very reasons that make it questionable alignment-wise! :smallsmile:

I know what you're getting at, but there's a difference between torturing prisoners and using a horrifying weapon defensively against an invading army who aim to slaughter you. If the option to simply burn the enemy from the face of the earth instantly is available, or heck, politely compel them en masse to go home and live honest lives, you obviously choose the more humane method, but when you cannot, you provide them a pit and give them the choice of whether or not to walk into it. What you describe is choosing the cruelest possible option in a list of entirely reasonable alternatives (on helpless foes, no less), and that's not my intent here.

The action amounts to allowing people to hang themselves, which is more neutral than anything else, at least when taken defensively and only as a last resort for the purposes of self-preservation.

Honestly, acid hurts just as badly, I imagine, and fire isn't especially pleasant to my recollection, either. Rotgrubs are just both incredibly effective and possess a useful psychological bonus as people tend to be understandably afraid of them.

I agree with you regarding captives, of course, but that's an entirely different subject.

Edit: Look at it this way. If you place traps in your keep and inform everyone that there are traps in your keep, is it the Rogues fault that he falls into the spiked pit you told him was somewhere in your home Tuesday, or is it your fault for not placing pillows at the bottom of the trap? Now, certainly, a good aligned person would accept the personal danger that might come with using a less effective trap from which the Rogue might escape, but a neutral character is fine with explaining the risks to others and checking the traps in the morning to see if someone thought they could get past the spike pit, tending to the wounds of anyone who survived and taking them to the authorities. This is that same principle applied to 10,000 armed men who want desperately to stab you because they'd like to have your gold.

[Slipperychicken]

Is it possible to use magic to summon monsters for the rotgrubs to eat?

Can you make a contract with a local government where you take death-row criminals (or anyone else they want to disappear) off their hands? You would probably pay the authorities (or at least the relevant officials) for it; partly for their trouble, partly to encourage them to give you a steady supply of bodies.

In that vein, you could probably make a similar deal with criminal organizations; they need to dump a fresh body? You'll take it off their hands, no questions asked.

Making death-by-rotgrub a legal punishment in your keep is a pretty cool one too.

[babus]

@Slipperychicken
Well, feeding live prisoners to Rotgrubs really isn't my character's style (currently feeling bad about finishing off a troll that was under a paralysis effect because we didn't have a place to store it), but you have a good point with body disposal. Rot grubs are very thorough, and if an area has problems with evil Necromancers, this could both be a great way to dispose of undead and remove any chance of the corpse being whole enough to reanimate. And of course there's the crazy number of orks and such the average adventurer kills in the course of a day.

Deal with the thieve's guild is probably a good idea, though that would probably depend on their reputation.

For the punishment bit... I think it might be enough of a threat for people to understand that their body is going into the rotgrub pool if they commit a crime like murder and get hanged/beheaded for it. And if their religion requires a respectful burial to keep them from going to x plane of hell or something (a valid fear in D&D land), you tell everyone you dropped them in the pool, but inter them elsewhere.