And they took the gifts that Nature left for them and turned those gifts to their own ends, shaping them through rites of chaos to become a teeming legion – least among their servants, but limitless in number.
This scroll describes “seething caverns of chaos, impossible in their vast expanse” and filled with “the seething terrors” that are the “least among the servitors of the Endless Sleepers”. These corrupted masses are called the Elder Brood and some are given names: Akop, tesk, marbassik spawn, tilaxic.
Attention is then paid to one of the Elder Brood in particular: “Unto the bulugon they gave the feast-lust, driving their bloated forms to obsession of corpulent excess.”
Bulugon were reptilian creatures who were gifted with an endless, insatiable appetite. This appetite fuels a limitless capacity for hate and a cruel drive for conquest. Their thick scales are stretched taut across an abdomen swelled with excess. Although bat-winged, their corpulent bodies make them clumsy fliers. (It’s actually quite remarkable that their wings can support their bulk at all.)
THE GLUTTONY
No matter how much a bulugon eats, the endless starvation in their belly continues. Their masters use their constant feeding to both grow their bloated bodies and to motivate their service, but there is no satisfaction which can be given to them.
There are many tales of lone bulugon tyrannizing isolated communities. They “enthrall those weakest of mind and will” and then seek out some isolated cave or (more blasphemously) a religious shrine. Word goes out through their newfound servitors that the devil must be fed or the community will feel its wrath. Tribute and service are demanded in the name of fear.
But its hunger cannot be satisfied. The bulugon will “feast until all the fields are bare; until all the stores are consumed; until it feeds upon starvation itself”. In just a few days, the bulugon can deplete the food reserves of the entire village. And then these malefic gluttons will turn on the locals and begin to feed on them. Horrific tales are collected here of villages reduced to grisly lotteries and bloody arenas in which desperate men and women are faced with the heinous choice of the next victim to be fed to an insatiable appetite.
THE GIFTS
Graphic depictions are given of the bulugon using their long horns to impale flying opponents, using the great bulk to send both themselves and their pinioned foe crashing to the ground.
Bulugon are also said to be able to “wreathe themselves in a mist of terror”. Although they are not very fast or agile, bulugon use this fog – and the fear which accompanies it – to disguise their approach. And then their considerable bulk – both of fat and muscle – is capable of delivering blows strong to crush plate armor.
Finally, the stomach of a bulugon possesses an acid of incredible strength. (Its enhancement is most likely the source of their appetite.) Once removed from the bulugon’s body, the acid quickly loses its strength, but the bulugon is able to spew this acid in a flesh-searing cone.
ALCHEMIC ARTS
Detailed instructions are given for extracting the acid from the belly of a recently deceased bulugon while sustaining some of its preternatural strength. With a successful Intelligence (Alchemist’s Supplies) check (DC 20), an alchemist can remove 1d6+4 vials of bulugon acid. This acid deals 6d6 acid damage, three times the damage of normal acid.
