Heres a creature you may not have heard of but probably should have, and before you say it in
the comments down below the video, yes, these are absolutely like four-armed Hutt aliens from Star
Wars, in fact, they are alien creatures that arrived on the world of Toril at some time in
the distant past and have been living there ever since. Most folks stumble across one of the totem
statue shrines to their gods somewhere near a river, estuary or the shore of a lake or the sea,
they may find evidence of some giant snake trail that leads from the water to some farmlands,
where livestock have been bludgeoned and stabbed, then carried off, back to the water, and the usual
assumption is that its sahuagin or Koa-toa or sea serpents or something else horrible from the deep.
On rare occasion, your adventuring party may stumble across one of their temporary settlements,
with thick, churned up mud surrounding strange mud brick, domed huts with great round doorways
and passages, ramps and decorative, but creepy sculptures of bone and furs, the occasional
item of interest taken from some dead explorer humanoid, resting on wooden shelves for study.
Clearly, these settlements, which eventually just dissolve away back into mud, stone and rotten wood
are the home of some intelligent creatures. What they are is the Ormyrr, an intelligent race
of semi-nomadic, four armed, amphibians who dwell near or in water sources, hibernating for months
at the muddy bottom of frozen lakes or out in the ocean trenches during the winter months,
and hunting on land, up to 40 miles from the water, during the warmer months of the year.
Ormyrr resemble a giant worm with a powerful torso, they do have a ribcage and tend to
slither around with their upper body upright. They look almost exactly like the Hutt aliens
from star wars except they have two sets of short muscular arms the end with sharp talons
and their huge head has a wide maw which has quite intimidating fangs. Ormyrr flesh
is pale white with the underside and belly being more tinged with purple hues. Their eyes are often
crowned with thick bony ridges which gives them a far more brutish, intimidating appearance than any
star wars Hutt. They have resting thug face. Much like the hutt again, there is very,
very little outward indicator of what gender each Ormyrr is, Males and females tend to
release different body scents and be of different maximum size, the average adult Ormyrr is around
25 feet or 7.6 meters long, but their upper body rises upright up to 10 feet, so they tower
over your aveage humanoid, they also consider the humanoid biped stance to be very weird and their
body form to be far superior, as they just can't comprehend how teetering around on little sticks
is in any way a better option, and to be fair, they can move at some reasonable speed on land
or in the water, they can't be knocked prone, so, they may have a point. The one thing that eludes
them and that they would absolutely love above all other things, is the ability to fly, and for this,
they have undertaken some weird experiments, such as attempting to combine their kind with Wyverns
in order to be born with wings. They have tried mutation, potions, and will attempt to steal and
study the use of any magic items, but, they are a species with almost no ability to use magic,
they simply have no proficiency for it. They do recognise this as a serious flaw and to counter
this weakness, they will concentrate any control and damage they dish out onto any spellcasters as
soon as they identify them in a combat situation, this is such an automatic tactic of theirs that
clever players who have faced them before should be able to exploit it, and as the DM, you should
let them, after all, players benefiting from learning the tactics of opponents is one of the
things that makes playing the game so much fun, it sucks when dungeon masters keep changing up
the monsters because they are worried the players are getting wise to how to beat them, my advice is
don't change the monster, change the encounter.. this is why the first time the players meet a
classic ambush predator like the Roper, it will be in the traditional cave environment, but the next
time, or if I suspect they have encountered ropers before, it will be a petrified forest in a desert,
or among the mobile and predatory mutant plants of a city greenhouse that is the site of an incursion
from a portal to the far realm, or soaked in the alien radiation of a crash landed space ship.
All that aside, Ormyrr are not automatically the enemies of the adventurers, sure they will be
angry if their temporary village is trespassed upon and ransacked by uninvited humanoids
or they are attacked while hunting for animals the humanoids seem to have an abundance of...
they might not realize that humans keep herds of cows for the purpose of milking them, I mean,
that's not actually obvious when you think about it. The Ormyrr may have attempted to compensate
the humans by clearing out predatory sharks and other creatures which greatly increases the humans
harvest of fish in their nets, but the humans might not make the connection... its not obvious
to us since we don't keep close tabs on the whole ecology of a lake or sea like the Ormyrr do,
in fact they can clearly smell the presence of concentrations of herd animals just from how the
water in farm creeks and streams changes with all the animal activity. Ormyrr are far from stupid,
they will avoid conflict and attempt to trade with humanoids if they can,
even if they think humanoids are kind of hideous freaks, they commonly refer to them as "Stick
Legs". Despite their rustling of livestock, they are actually omnivorous and have as widely varied
a diet as we do, eating plants, birds, mammals and plenty of reptiles, marine iguanas are like
their roast chickens, but when on land, they are just like the hutt aliens and will keep
a cage of small fluffy mammals of some kind, or plump little reptiles in a bowl that they treat
like shrieking squeeze toys, sweat mops and junk food. They decorate their body with greasy paints
in patterns that resemble coral growth, they also wear necklaces made out of slain creatures'
and adventurers' skulls. These items serve both a decorative and a practical purpose,
the skulls often hide small items, and thrown weapons inside, they have come to understand
that they are much more resistant to toxic gases and other poisons than humanoid creatures are,
so they will make use of alchemical flasks and wondrous items that produce clouds of poison gas,
or they will sneak doses of poison into the village well, drastically
weakening a humanoid settlement or farmstead, possibly avoiding a direct fight entirely.
Aside from their avaricious desire for magic, which they will lie,
cheat and rob to get hold of, they can also be relied on to attack Yuan-ti and Harpies
on sight, they really hate those creatures. Ormyrr are very big and have a huge mouth,
so when they speak common, they have very deep and booming voices, they talk slowly and they
don't typically mince their words, they speak to be heard and understood. Their own language
is largely too low in frequency for human ears to pick up, it sounds like deep clunking purring
sounds, long moans and pulses that humans can feel vibrating their body if they are close by.
They certainly use this communication advantage in combat, signalling to each other and coordinating
their efforts, they will attempt to divide and overwhelm their enemy, at first getting into
an advantageous position to make ranged attacks, where they open up with volleys of sling stones,
then heavy boulders, and finally, they will throw weighted nets and possibly tridents. If
they single out targets, they will gang up on them switching to brutally heavy single-handed blades
or hand axes, making great use of the advantage of having four arms, they don't carry shields
or typically wear any armor, they just seek to end a fight quickly and decisively,
cutting down determined opponents swiftly and booming out demands for immediate and complete
surrender to any who remain standing. I recommend forcing an intimidation check on the player
characters or allied non player characters as soon as the Ormyrr have just cut down an enemy and are
bellowing that either everyone drops their weapons or they are going to butcher the lot of them.
Up close and personal, facing a ten foot wall of muscle and four very fast and blood soaked blades,
coupled with a bellowing maw full of fangs... they are very intimidating creatures, even for the
most battle-hardened adventurer, unless they are totally immune to fear, seeing them belt an ally
in the side of the skull with the flat of their blade and crumple them to the ground unconscious
rather than hack their limbs off, it is a pretty tempting offer.
See, Ormyrr don't eat intelligent creatures, they certainly don't eat humanoids, they largely just
want to be left alone to live their own lives, their own way. They react violently to humanoids
mainly to defend themselves, their numbers are few, there are only three known tribes of Ormyrr,
the Iyryrildu, Uluauther, and the Sharpstick clan. These tribes are all found in the northern regions
of Faerun, there are most likely more tribes to be found further south and possibly other locations
on the planet of Toril. Those who have played the classic Pool of Radiance adventure will know of
the Ormyrr, most likely facing a deadly ambush somewhere along a riverbank. The first sign of
trouble is often a boulder hurled up to 40 feet, the most powerful and experienced Ormyrr fighters
will wait until the targets of their attack charge into them, then draw a pair of two-handed swords
or two-handed battle axes, attempting to land a critical hit, then use their bulk and body
traits to roll over top of their enemy, crushing, constricting with their bulk and long worm-like
tail, they won't wait around for a spell caster to just lob spells at them from a distance,
they will charge that spellcaster, chop them down or at the very least attempt to pin their limbs to
their constricted body so they can't cast spells. Strangely, some of the Ormyrr's obsession with
magic has resulted in them converting to the worship of Mystra, the humanoid's goddess of
magic. Many are pushing for their elders to accept peace and trade with the numerous and
powerful humanoids, as well as the goodly aquatic races, such as Tritons and Merfolk.
When conversing with an Ormyrr, they scatter some of their own language into their conversation,
including the words Hulu, Hoi and Grebbo.. their own names are short, such as Geb, Pujiik,
Grom, Krov and Retha. I suggest throwing in some of the Botchi language from Star wars.
When travelling in smaller numbers, the Ormyrr are much more likely to carry and use more powerful
magical artifacts. particularly wands, their most treasured items, aside from their sneaky poison
flasks and their well made, but cumbersomely heavy melee weapons. If they have lighter,
humanoid made weapons or a shield or some such, it is always a magical weapon, something they can't
make themselves, so they value them very highly. An interesting species, ones I am looking forward
to using in my next campaign... can you imagine dealing with a business
negotiation with one of them? How very star wars meets Forgotten realms cool is that?
Would your adventurer survive being hurled into a great pit containing a juvenile Tarrasque,
armed with nothing but an oversized thigh bone? My name is AJ Pickett, I upload new videos with
both historic and contemporary Roleplaying Game lore every week, I have a discord community you
are free to join, I also upload my content to Patreon and Subscribestar, plus, finally, I have
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the right lower corner, the little spring symbol. I look forward to your comments there and in the
comments down below. Thanks for listening, I will be back with more content for you, very soon.