Monsters & Monsterfolk

Battle Jelly

Battle jellies serve as Zordin mounts. These slow-floating creatures, about the size of a small table, are brainless and function entirely on instinct. Their tentacles hang below a flat, bulbous medusa that serves as the “seat” of its rider. Some Zordin fashion saddles for their jelly mounts. 

Carrier Jelly

Carrier jellies are enormous jellyfish, as big as skyreme skiffs, with capacity to carry as many passengers (usually Zordin raiders and their monster minions). 

Cubeworm

Cubeworms, also called tongueworms for their resemblance to enormous tongues, dwell within the masonry of islands that have sunk into the Sea of Death. Their boneless bodies live between the gaps in bricks and stones, emerging to feed on prey that alights above them.

Elu

Elus, called Boneless by Zordin, are human-sized, octopuslike monsters that wear scavenged plate armor like a snail wears a shell. This armor makes them tough to damage, but the creatures aren’t capable of wearing it effectively (note their action roll penalties). 

Tactics. If an elu takes lethal damage, it flows out of its armor shell, retreats, and tries to hide.

Girtablin

Girtablins, called Krill-folk by Zordin, are shrimplike bipedal monsters, about 4 feet tall, covered in chitin armor, and fast on their many feet. They can walk like humans, skitter like shrimp, and can hold makeshift spears in their claws—one of which is oversized and can shoot blasts of pressure. 

Tactics. Girtablins' quickness makes them particularly effective when Outflanking foes. Luckily, their shoddy spears can't inflict too much lethal damage. Scavengers by nature, they're quick to flee.

Girtablin Fiend

Girtablin fiends, or Scorpion-folk as they're known by the Zordin, are among the most fearsome monsterfolk, easily recognizable by their huge stingers. Larger than normal girtablins but just as quick, their stingers are armed with debilitating poison. 

Tactics. Fiends hold axes, but they're not great at wielding weapons. They prefer to grapple heroes with their claws so they can gain brace advantage on a subsequent Stinger attack. 

Poison. The loss to maximum Life and defenses normally lasts until downtime. However, a character with Medicine lore can take a Maneuver rest activity to treat the poison, removing all its effects on a 7+, and half its effects on a 4+. A character can only attempt this activity once, and it must be done within an hour or so of being poisoned.  

Isopu

Isopus are hand-sized parasites that take up residence in the mouths of kulus, after eating and replacing the kulus’ tongues. (The kulus don't seem to mind their passengers.) They resemble trilobites with snail-like eyestalks, and they speak multiple languages in a high-pitched chittering. The Zordin call them Tongue-thieves.

Tactics. The isopu prefers to stay inside the mouth of its kulu host. If its host dies, the isopu will surrender and say anything to survive long enough to find another host.

Lore. An isopu believes it's an expert on any number of subjects and readily offers to share lore. However, the creatures know far, far less than they let on. Even if they do know something, their inability to distinguish truth from falsehood makes it all but impossible to learn anything from them (though an Arbiter may have some luck). 

Isopu do know plenty about their fellow Monsters. They're also curious about Mazrian magic and have likely studied the Scrolls of the Sorcerer from a looted copy. With their many little articulated appendages, the creatures are naturally adept at dark magic. 

Kulu

Kulus, or Fish-folk as the Zordin know them, are bulky, bipedal monsters with humanlike limbs and the heads, dorsal fins, slimy skin, and dead-looking eyes of trouts. A skin organ, called the lateral line, helps them sense pressure changes—making them more aware than you might think.

Tactics. Kulus have a strong shoaling instinct. They'll mindlessly follow their fellow monsters into battle—or out of it.

Kulu Brute

Kulu brutes, with the heads of sharks, are larger and much more aggressive than other kulus, and they bite. Brutes stand nine feet tall, and their massive bulk makes them difficult to stagger with attacks. 

Tactics. Brutes smash any terrain features in their way—particularly if a structure is supporting a hero who thinks they're safe up on high ground. 

Arms. Even very strong heroes are too small to wield the brute's tree trunk as a weapon. Some brutes are fond of tearing doors off their hinges and using them as giant shields (+3 max Guard, 8 durability, -1 Maneuver).

Mega-Snail

Many Kananite islands are home to purple snails—carnivorous creatures the size of dogs, which Kananites hunt and harvest to make brilliant purple dye. Mega-snails are purple snails warped by the energies of the Chaos realm to grow to ludicrous size. The shells of these creatures have dozens of spiky protrusions as long and as deadly as spears.

Tactics. Mega-snails aren't smart enough to consciously use their shell offensively. Instead, they seek to envelop prey with their giant foot (that is, their fleshy body)—then pierce the grappled prey with their radula, a beaklike protrusion. Remember that radula attacks have brace advantage.