As promised, in my last video I mentioned a few far realm creatures which tend to show
up in truly apocalyptic environments, such as when demons are about to pull a section
of the prime material plane into the abyss, because they have damaged and corrupted the
laws of physics and magic so much, they have managed to shift the entire place into another
dimension, a living dimension of chaos and evil.
Apocalyptic environments are something not really covered that well by D&D, sure, the
layers of the abyss are very, very nasty and can seem a lot like an apocalyptic environment,
but they are mostly stable, a true apocalyptic environment is absolutely not, it is in the
process of being destroyed.
Over the next few months, I will be describing such places and providing a lot of resources
for you to run games where your stories can venture into such nightmare scenarios for
your players, also a new exploration super series is on the way covering Astral Dominions
in a whole new way, but today its time to talk about the Wystes.
Wystes appear as 25 foot (7.6m) long and 2 feet (0.61m) wide translucent worms, full
of weird, undulating organs, they have a sucker mouth at one end surrounded by claw-tipped
tentacles and they are deceptively fast, highly territorial, swarm feeders that dwell in noxious
blue fluid, highly toxic and violently mutagenic...
do not get that crap on you.
Wystes come to us from the fantastic boxed set module "The Gates of Firestorm Peak" which
is packed full of creepy, violent and mutated far realm creatures, such as the Gibberlings,
who carry their offspring under their skin like squirming parasites, but also a self-contained
little ecosystem which has since spread across the prime material plane.
You may encounter some clusters of strange blobs, bulbs, and vivid blue goo originally
brought into the world through a vast interdimensional gateway, forced open by a monomaniacal alienist
wizard in their profane sanctum.
The spongy black bulbs are vegetative, rooted to the stone ceiling with tough, fibrous anchors.
They draw sustenance directly from the minerals in the stone, weakening the material slowly,
leading to future cave-ins.
Among these black lumps there are also white lumps which slowly move about and feed on
the black bulbs, producing a blue, gooey byproduct which leaks out of sucker pores on their fleshy
surface, the white creatures are more like a sea sponge, their exterior is leathery on
the surface and slimy where the blue goo oozes out constantly, its feet are like stubby starfish
legs, adhesive suckers probe out from their gelatinous interior and they don't seem to
have any mouthparts.
Below the slowly moving white blobs and the black lumps clinging to the pock-marked rock,
the vivid blue goo coats the floor of the chamber and all the excess goo slowly drains
into a huge pool.The great goo reservoir is approximately 80-feet deep before it narrows
to cracks so small that only the goo itself can seep downward.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, this slime will break into caverns of the
Underdark.
The bulbs, lumps, and goo pose no overt threat to curious player characters unless one of
them licks or eats any sample of these organisms, the character must make a DC 16 Constitution
saving throw or become poisoned, while poisoned they lose 3d4 hit points per round until they
either make a saving throw or die from acute gastritis.
The goo itself is not dangerous to the touch, short term, just sticky and annoying.
Anyone fighting while standing in the sludge must make a DC 12 Dexterity Balance check
with a +2 bonus to their roll each round, or slip and fall face-first into the muck.
Within this blue goo lives a vicious nest of enormous, lurking alien worms.
The Wytes only surface occasionally as they don't need to breathe, they have a lamprey-like
maw surrounded by large, claw-tipped cilia.
The cilia not only allow the wyste to sense its environment and feed itself, they also
provide defence against other Far-Realm entities who fancy the wystes for a tasty treat.
But we will get to the top of the food chain in the form of the horrific dharculus in a
moment.
Prolonged exposure to the blue goop liquid is dangerous, even being in near proximity
to it for a long time can have a mutagenic effect on living creatures.
This can result in children born with the potential to become sorcerers of course, but
can also result in generations of slowly degrading features so that humanity slowly slips away,
leaving more bestial and warped creatures.
Wystes remain undetected if undisturbed, but breaking the surface of their domain will
trigger an aggressive leaping attack, where the huge worms burst 15 feet out of the muck,
their stats and basic attacks are quite similar to a Rhemorhaz, except they don't use heat
for attacks, and they are unlikely to spit acid.
Wystes can use their body to entangle another creature within 10 feet of the edge of the
blue liquid pool.
Any grappled victim is dragged under the surface of the blue goop on the following round where
they must contend with multiple wystes all snapping onto them and dragging them down
to probable suffocation unless they can make a saving throw and make it back to the surface.
The goo is completely opaque and the distorting effects of the field of corruption make it
difficult for submerged characters to tell which way is up; a successful strength/swimming
proficiency check means a character can make it back to the surface of the viscous muck
or they may very well thresh about, losing precious oxygen and at severe risk of swallowing
a deadly mouthful of the toxic blue sludge before they make it to the surface and gasping
lungfuls of air.
I think the wystes are best described much like the horrific worm-like creatures seen
in Peter Jackson's King Kong movie, they really just exist to feed and don't suffer from fear
or doubt, attacking any creature that disturbs their pond.
Now I did mention that they have a natural predator, well, there is nothing natural about
the dreaded and mysterious Dharculus.
These creatures are known to cluster near the unstable gateway to the far realm they
originally crossed over from, feeding as much on the weird energy of that place as anything
else, but they are hunters of the Border ethereal plane and can range far and wide in search
of prey.
If you happen to encounter a swarm of eel-like creatures swimming through the air like a
deadly school of predatory fish, what you may be looking at is just a part of the body
of one creature.
To those who can see into the Ethereal, the "eels" are merely the protruding tentacle
tips of the dharculus, a massive and horrific monster that will absolutely eat your character
if given the chance.
So listen closely, this may just save your character's life.
The main body of the Dharculus seems to be made of fused and braided flesh forming thick,
ridged worm-like parts with the rear half of the body arranged more like a stinging
wasps rear end, curled back over top of itself to form a stinger at the front.
Most of the time a character will not be able to see the main body of the creature, except
when it manages to ensnare and draw prey back to its huge, drooling maw filled with razor-sharp
teeth, not all its projecting tentacles are used for eating, some of them end in eyeballs,
more or less, they keep these sensory organs safely retracted into the ethereal plane to
keep them from being harmed during hunting or feeding.
The hunting tentacle eels latch on to victims and inflict 1d4 slashing damage each round
they are biting into a victim and dragging them into the ethereal.
A man can likely tear one of the tentacles free if they pull hard and can stand the pain,
but multiple eels can much reduce any chance of escape through brute force.
If the Dharculus manages to hit with three tentacle attacks on one medium-sized or small
creature they will draw that victim into the border ethereal next round, where the victim
starts to take 2d10 piercing damage per round from that huge maw attempting to feeding on
them.
Always remember, a tentacle can be torn free or shoved, both cases will see it withdrawn
back into the ethereal plane, and it takes four whole rounds for the Dharculus to re-insert
a part of it's body back into our reality.
Being located mostly on the border ethereal is a gnarly defensive tactic but adventurers
can figure out how to defeat them.
A victim who is drawn through the veil has an opportunity to attack the dharculus as
it attempts to quickly kill the prey with its devastating bite, during which time the
victim is half in and half out of the border ethereal as it takes four rounds for them
to fully cross over, after which they will need to find an alternate path back to the
prime material plane, or remain drifting in the border ethereal for quite some time, perhaps
eventually dying from something else and passing into the deep ethereal and onto the afterlife.
dragging oneself out of the ethereal border while partly submerged in it is like pulling
oneself free of quicksand, requiring a strength saving throw at a difficulty class appropriate
for the level of the encounter.
In combat it is easier to treat the maw tentacles as separate creatures that simply get lopped
off as they run out of hit points, the lost tentacles will regrow via regeneration, it
takes about a day to completely regrow a limb and the dharculus will never insert a partially
regrown limb into the material plane during hunting or feeding.
Like pretty much all aberrations from the distant and twisted dimensions have an utterly
alien psychology.
Their intentions and motivations are just madness, they make no real sense to us, but
these critters are fairly clearly motivated by some desire to feed, to gorge themselves
endlessly on any flesh they find, anything they can't eat immediately, they will simply
disable viciously through a very grim injury, then leave the morsel sitting in the border
ethereal plane, perfectly preserved for later feasting.
Only one or perhaps two of these creatures are even known to have crossed over into our
reality, and these exist only within Firestorm Peak.
That is not to say that more do not exist within the Far Realm.
As time passes, it seems inevitable that more will arrive, hunting the beaches of the Prime
Material in relative safety from the shallow sea of the Border Ethereal.
Considering that these creatures reproduce by asexual budding, just one turning up on
any particular planet is a disaster in the making that can lead to the extermination
of all other forms of life.
Much like demonic incursions, the places where the far realms breakthrough and mix with other
realities is never good, the consequences are always long-term and rather dire, resulting
in twisted forms of life, suffering, madness and the increase of dangerously unleashed
psychic power, sadly, the place is a path to a certain kind of power, and it draws in
maniacs with an insane lust for power like moths to a flame.
Most schools of magic take the protection of mortal reality very seriously, the schools
of divination, abduration and the mind are constantly on the watch for any disturbances
in the normal flow of reality, the incursions of the far realm typically have a very strong
psychic element to them, as stupendously mighty elder evils dwell in far off dimensional frequencies,
not separated by physical space, that's not how dimensions work, rather, those elder evils
nest in the forgotten AM radio stations, while the multiverse carries on obliviously in the
new, fancy FM stations, oh so easily forgetting that the powers that made, and can unmake
reality, are merely sleeping away the eons, and if they truly awaken, absolute chaos and
mayhem will be the result.
And with that charming thought, I leave you to your day or evening, as always, thanks
for joining me and I will be back with more for you, very soon.