I have seen hard-working men labour all day to dig holes in some really hard clay, hoist
great logs upright using a team of bulls and hammer those massive poles in place with those
same cattle, a few pulleys and a lot of wet rope, sweat, patience and determination, plus
a really hefty boulder.
I have also stood in frightened awe as a hulking monster came tearing out of the nearby forest,
charged right at one of those poles, and swiped at it so hard with its heavy, clawed hand
that the pole just exploded in the middle and sheared right off its base with a sound
like a bolt of lightning grounding right next to my skull.
To say that a Gray Render is formidably strong is quite an understatement, they are aptly
named, believe me.
So, having survived that encounter by essentially crawling under a pile of pulverized wood chips
and playing mushroom for a while, I naturally became very interested in what in the nine
hells a Gray Render is and how best to avoid them, because I just find it very difficult
to reason with a thing as stupid as an ogre and with those six, yellow eyes..
I just don't know what I am dealing with.
Surely this thing had to be some sort of mage bred monster used in wars long since over
and now wandering the wildlands, its original methods of control now simply weird behavioural
quirks that express themselves in often bizarre and always dangerous ways.
Appeals to the local lord by the homesteaders who roused the hulk to such violence so suddenly
fell on fairly deaf ears, it was tournament season and his lordship was off on a seasonal
tour of the competition circuit, earning dubious valor while the people who build the new fields
and found new mineral deposits to feed the lords taxes were quite likely to get slaughtered
without some serious armored might to defend them.
Such is the eternal plight of the extraordinary humans who, despite all the dangers, just
feel some innate drive to bring the wilderness to heel and dominate their environment, no
matter the cost in lives.
Without brawn, what could I do but provide the one thing I seemed blessed with... a bit
of brain.
So, I took a few nights to get to know the local woodsman and foresters, sure enough,
one of them just happened to know a lot more about this particular gray render and also
had a very good idea why the new lumber mill construction had driven it into such a demolition
frenzy... we trampled its flowers, or rather, it thought we killed ALL the spring flowers
in the forest, which made this one particular elven girl sad.
You have no idea how nervous I was, in a rather aloof elven village, presenting a garland
of fresh forest flowers like a royal crown to the little elven princess, while a monster
with the power of a fair-sized adult dragon just sat next to her and watched.
I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, my every motion
and sound calm and reassuring, while my eyes skittered back and forth between the little
girl and her pet monster.
Close up, they are no less mysterious, but I found myself in a unique position to study
the creature and compare it to what I knew of the world.
Certainly, the Gray Render is not from Toril, nor is it some mage bred mutation of any creature
of the natural world.
Even with a somewhat hunched ape-like posture, the creature stands over nine feet tall and
easily four feet across its massive shoulders.
Extremely dense musculature, thick bones and gray hide like that of an elephant, except,
kind of like how mammal skin can shift a little with goosebumps and the like, Render skin
can soften or harden suddenly to absorb damage, so, you might be able to get some warning
the thing is about to go on a rampage by the tightening of its hide over its rippling muscles.
All this seems to fit a creature from a very large world with strong gravity, dense atmosphere
and tremendous storms which pelt the landscape with dangerous debris.
Renders have a bullet-shaped head with six relatively small, yellow eyes, again, that
redundancy of these vital organs on the head speaks of the violence they are built to withstand
wherever they originally came from.
They have no other facial features aside from an anvil of a jaw with a double row of teeth
that rival a carnivorous thunder beast, quite capable of biting right through the backbone
of a fully grown bull moose.
They are actually asexual marsupials, technically, with a very strange reproductive system.
Nodules form in their flesh, being nourished in a temporary pouch that looks like a fleshy
bud growing from their hide which, when mature enough for independence then breaks off from
the parent, who gives it no additional thought and moves on, leaving its offspring to fend
for itself, from what I have been told, on some worlds they only produce a single offspring
during their life, but it seems the richer food sources are the more offspring they create,
which means that wherever they originally came from, their environment could not support
any more than a small, limited population of these super predators, and perhaps they
were so few and widely dispersed, needing a partner to breed was simply not practical,
or, such cataclysmic devastation occurred on their planet from meteors and such, that
at times only a scant few creatures remained and had to regenerate their population by
any means they could.
Of course, this also made the things absolutely ideal for errant wizards to collect and transport
to some other environment because you only need one of them, and of course, Toril has
a very rich and abundant ecosystem, full of microclimates and unique ecologies so the
Gray Renders have thrived on the planet and can now be found everywhere that swampy forests
support plenty of game animals.
We should be thankful Toril is also full of other super predators, which seem to keep
the Renders population in check.
Swampy forests, you see, are some of the richest sources of game on the whole planet, and due
to the huge appetite of the Renders, they naturally find a more suitable hunting ground
in these places where they find them, but, I don't doubt for a second that you can find
these creatures just about anywhere because surely the planet they came from was a far
more austere place, where their survival teetered on a knife-edge constantly.
While I say the eyes are redundant, they are not just three pairs of the same set, as each
pair of eyes perceives light in a slightly different spectrum, on Toril this gives them
no particular advantage other than 60-foot night vision as far as we know, perhaps they
can detect ultraviolet and even Underdark Faerzress energy, I've seen no confirmation
of that, nor do they have any ability to detect invisible creatures or to peer into the border
ethereal plane, further study is required on the subject of their vision.
Perhaps they could see by the light of three different suns in the sky of their homeworld.
They have a keen sense of smell, their olfactory organ associated with this extends along the
mouth, upper palate and right down the throat, affording a wide area to collect chemical
traces by air or taste.
They are brutes, not very mentally capable at all, they have an intelligence of only
3, so, they just don't understand any sort of tactics other than to charge directly at
their victims and tear them apart as ferociously as possible.
One thing I notice is absent in 5th editions stat block for the Render is that they normally
inflict double damage to inanimate objects and structures, qualifying them as living
siege weapons.
Also, though they are listed with a strength of 19, which is formidable, they traditionally
have the same sort of supernatural strength as a Giant, effectively lifting and carrying
weights as though they were a size category Huge rather than size category large as they
are.
What they do have is a natural armor class of 19, 18d10+90 or between 108 and 270 with
an average of 189 hit points, +8 to strength saving throws, +9 to constitution saving throws
two claw and one bite attack each round and a special ability called Bloody Rampage which
states that when the gray render takes damage, it makes one attack with its claws against
a random creature within its reach, other than its master.
Master... and with that word, here is where the render goes from otherworldly brute to
a much more quirky and interesting beast.
A curious impulse drives the gray render.
Despite its hulking form and terrible appetite, it wants most of all to bond with an intelligent
creature and, once bonded, give its life to protect that creature.
Nobody knows exactly why they do this.
It is generally thought that at some point in their past, the ancestor of all contemporary
Gray Renders was somehow tamed a little so that it felt a compulsion, a deep drive to
make a bond with some other intelligent creature.
This would be the mage who summoned them from whatever location they came from, as an insurance
policy against the Render just turning their immense fury on them as soon as they stepped
out of whatever magical entrapment they were summoned into.
Thankfully, Gray Renders always appear as solitary predators, they just don't tolerate
any other adult Renders hunting in the same area they are, however, they don't seem to
mind other predators and scavengers following along after them, cleaning up the remains
of any prey the Renders don't swallow hole, as the renders are invariably messy eaters
who tend to scatter severed limbs and organs all around themselves as they feed.
They tear prey apart and swallow chunks, they don't bother with anything more fussy than
that.
The strength of their bite, just to give you some idea of how powerful they are, is capable
of ripping a three-foot diameter tree out of the ground and their heavy black claws
can shred that tree trunk in just a few moments.
They are +8 to hit with a bite and claw attacks, the bite inflicts 2d12+4 piercing damage and
if the target is medium size or smaller, the target must succeed on a DC16 strength saving
throw or be knocked prone.
For the claw they have two clawing attacks each round and each inflicts 2d8+4 slashing
damage to any creature within 10 feet of where it stands, if the target happens to be already
prone, it inflicts an additional 2d6 bludgeoning damage.
They are not very fast, considering they weigh over four thousand pounds, a speed of 30 feet
per round is not too bad.
Outside of Toril, the spelljamming alien race known as Neogi tend to have Gray Renders accompany
them, if they know of the Grey Renders home sphere, they are not divulging that secret,
and knowing the Neogi, would have plundered the place barren by now anyway, as long as
the Clockwork horrors or some other cosmic threat hasn't done so already.
It doesn't matter about their homeworld much, the Gray Renders exist perfectly fine without
it, on countless different crystal spheres, roaming the elemental planes, they are very
hardy and adapt pretty well.
You can encounter Gray Renders almost anywhere, but be warned!
They may almost instantly want to form a bond between them and another intelligent creature,
such as humans.
If it encounters a suitable master, the render sings to it — a weird, warbling cry accompanied
by scratching at the earth and a show of deference.
Once it forms the bond, the render serves its master in all things.
Well, as much as their limited intelligence allows.