And the Dukes of Chaos raised up the least among their servants and they were the most plentiful of their servants and the formless among many and riven of all nature.

This scroll describes, in brief, the Elder Brood – a myriad horde of “creatures born of chaos” who are the “least among the servitors of the Galchutt”. Names like akop, bulugon, nyogoth, obaan, and the like are listed.

But the scroll then settles into a particular subset of lore describing one creature from amongst the Elder Brood: The Spineseekers known as Tilaxic.

Tilaxic possess the body of a snake covered with the chitin of a scorpion. Hundreds of spiky legs jut out form their lithe forms, and their bellies are marked with three suckered and befanged mouths. Wriggling, tentacled arms and insectoid wings rise from the creature’s sides and back.

Tilaxic will swarm over the backs of their victims, suctioning their mouths lamprey-like over the spinal column and sending tendrils piercing into the flesh. A tilaxic which successfully parasites itself to a host will take control of its motor functions from the neck down, while slowly sucking the vitality and life from them.

SUMMONING RITUAL

The book also describes the particular details of the summoning ritual necessary to call forth a tilaxic from “the teeming mass of the Elder Brood”.

A summon fiend spell can be used to temporarily call forth a tilaxic, but the rituals described also allow one to use 1,000 gp of material components and cast the spell using a 6th-level spell slot to bring forth the tilaxic full-bodied.

THE TILAXIC’S CAGE

However, caution is also given that tilaxics are inherently untrustworthy creatures. Those who attempt to turn them against their foes are just as likely to find the tilaxic turn against them.

“And thus cages were crafted for the treacherous brood-spawn, and their purposes turned to those who would harvest for the Lords of Chaos…”

Tilaxic’s Cage: A small glass box in which arcane symbols of gold have been suspended. One side is hinged, allowing a tilaxic to be sealed within. The cage places the tilaxic in a state of suspended animation (similar to a hold monster spell cast by a 9^th-level wizard). When the cage is activated it can either be opened immediately, within 1d4 rounds, or within 1d4 minutes (depending on which rune are touched on the cage). When the cage opens, the tilaxic is released.

Market Price: 1,500 gp
Weight: 4 lbs.

DESIGN NOTES

I created the name Tilaxic to fit in with the rest of the Elder Brood, but this creature is a Spineseeker, once again from The Book of Fiends.

You can see an example of the intended use of the Books of the Elder Brood in Running the Campaign: Inserting Bangs, where a tilaxic was sent by the chaos cultists as an assassin in my Ptolus campaign. The Elder Brood is a tool used by the cultists, and if the PCs could discover these volumes of lore before the cultists used them, then they might be able to glean important advantages. (Or perhaps even learn how to turn the Elder Brood against the cultists.)

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And the Dukes of Chaos reached into the flesh of the living, taking whatever their power could command turning it unto the purposes which they saw best. From such works were the Elder Brood delivered – a horde of flesh driven to pinnacles far beyond the pale boundaries of nature.

This scroll describes the creation of the essyat – one of several races “bound to the service of the Galchutt and all who would follow them”. Names such as the akop, nyogoth, solesik, and tilaxic are given as others among their ranks.

Of the essyat, the scroll says this: “From the living were claimed the heart, the throat, and the stomach. Of the rest, different purposes were rendered. Of the stomach, it was placed upon the rack of the zaug and distended into a bloated form possessed of both legs and arms. Of the heart, its four chambers were transformed by the rites of alchemy and placed within the stomach. Of the throat was fashioned a mouth of horrors.”

THE FOUR HUMOURS

“Each of the four chambers within the essyat is tempered so as to produce, according to bio-alchemical principles, one of the four classical humours: Black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile. Each of these, in turn, is tempered to heighten its potency. In this fashion, the essyat may serve as the infernal, living artillery of chaos.”

The essyat are apparently capable of vomiting forth the potent humours distilled in their stomachs. Their black bile produces severe melancholy, rendering anyone struck by it incapable of action. Their blood fills victims covered in its sticky gore with ecstatic happiness. Their phlegm engenders extreme cowardice. And their yellow bile invites wild and random wrath.

THE RACK OF THE ESSYAT

Vivid (and disturbing) description is given to their odious treatment of captives: The essyat will force-feed captured enemies with gouts of humour. When their victim is bloated with blood and bile, but not yet quite dead, the essyat pops the grisly meal into its mouth and swallows it down.

There are descriptions of essyat upon the field of battle bloated and distended with the “grisly contours of those hapless souls thrust into their limitless, pliable gullets”.

ALCHEMIC ARTS

With a cooperative essyat, it is apparently quite easy to harvest great quantities of bile. Once separated from the potent conditions of the essyat’s belly, however, the potency of the bile will quickly equalize.

With supplies worth 25 gp, however, and a successful Intelligence (Alchemist’s Supplies) check (DC 15), the potency of harvested bile can be maintained as a single-use splash weapon:

• Black Bile: Subject is incapacitated, standing still and wrapped in their own morose thoughts.
• Blood: Subject is filled with joy, optimism, and good cheer. They cannot take any offensive action.
• Phlegm: The target becomes filled with cowardice and must flee as if frightened (although this is not a fear effect).
• Yellow Bile: The target is incited to violence and vengefulness. They turn on the nearest creature, friend or foe, with their most powerful attack or spell.

The primary target is affected for 1d4 rounds. A secondary target is affected for 1 round. A Wisdom save (DC 17) negates the effect in each case.

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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.

DESIGN NOTES

Like the akop, the bulugon were taken from Green Ronin’s The Book of Fiends to expand the ranks of the Elder Brood.

Another technique to note here is that each Book of the Elder Brood focuses on a different brood, but each volume also introduces the Elder Brood as a whole. (Since any one of these books might be the first one the PCs chance upon.) In several of them I list the names of other creatures within the Elder Brood, but notably each listing is incomplete and each listing is different-but-overlapping. This is a matryoshka techniques, with the players being able to slow correlate a list of the Elder Brood by comparing different sources of lore.

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And from those teeming places of shadow and virulent beds of life and seething pits of chaos, the Natharl’nacna bent the substance of the world unto their will. From the work came the least of their servants, a swarming brood of anarchy and despite.

This slim folder of supple hide, clasped shut with a length of emerald green ribbon, contains a dozen or so individual sheets of parchment. Written in an archaic – almost alien – form of the Common tongue, they tell a sad and cautionary tale.

In a time of great strife and a war, a race of high sorcerers fled the mortal world and took refuge within “a spired realm of the Dreaming.” For long years without count this race dominated their new home – they were masters of magic and builders of wonder; they lived in peace and glory.

They were called the Akop and the years of their golden age seemed without end.

But there came a time when this proud race faced a problem they could not overcome: “Although they lived within the halls of Dreaming, yet their arts had never mastered the dream-craft. They worked marvels within dreams, but were not of the Dream themselves.”

Their world was dying. And in its slow decay, it had become severed from the mortal realm from which the Akop had first come. “From the fraught-prison of their own creation, there was no flight.”

In their desperation they turned to a creature referred to in the text only as the Kindred. The Kindred had the power to free them from their self-inflicted prison, but he demanded a high price: “Through his gates they would pass, but once passed they would blood-bind their hearts to serve him for unto a generation of their race.”

Faced with obliteration, the Akop agreed. But the Kindred was treacherous: The gates which took the Akop from their world were foully enchanted. As they emerged into the “deep eurl-realms of chaos”, the Akop were transformed into insubstantial creatures of living shadow, bereft of mortal form. “Of the flesh, they could not be harmed. But nor could they breed of the flesh. There would be no passing of their generations and upon their oath the Kindred had bound them for all eternity. And so the Kindred became the Enslaver of Races.”

In their new form, the akop became members of the Elder Brood – a foul mixture of twisted races that are described as “servitors of the Kindred and the kindred of the Kindred”. There they “took their place among the essyat and gadacro; the nintha and the obaan”. Over the years that followed, the akop degenerated – losing first their magic and then their sanity.

“In their madness, the Kindred found he could not command them; could not control them; could not rule them. But yet, in madness, they ever-serve the mad-mind of the Kindred and work unto his ends.”

THE NAUGHT-FLESH OF THE AKOP

The akop are incorporeal beings of shadow. “And they loathe those luck-fated to still wear their flesh. They blood-boil to battle-lust and long to bring all those of their former kindred into their madness of the cur-kin. But in this the curse of the Kindred tightens, for with each akop who passes in the battle-fraught, their race-pride is brought one step closer to its end-utter.”

THE TOUCH OF THE AKOP: “Fear the shadow-flesh which is not, for in its touch the madness of a dying race shall seep through pore and blood into the bone and brain. Those afflicted by the touch of the akop shall be driven to their Dream of madness.”

It seems that those driven insane by the akop are thrust into dreams of apocalyptic vision. There seems to be a shared quality to these dreams (among those whose shattered minds have recovered enough to communicate), and it is believed that they are the race memories of the Realm in which the akop once lived – twisted through the memory of its destruction and their own madness.

At this point, in a separate hand, there is a report of many such visions collated from various sources. Some are not given any textual authority, but seem to have been gathered first-hand (and perhaps deliberately so). They conjure strange visions of ruptured towers of obsidian; cascades of shattered stone glittering with chaos-tossed magicks; of great forests ripping apart in silent desolation; of rivers plunging into ourobouric self-destruction.

SUMMONING THE AKOP

A final selection of papers details the particular details of the summoning ritual necessary to “summon a brood-swarm of akop to give the truest service of chaos”.

Using these notes, a summon fiend spell can be modified in one of two ways.

First, it can be cast using a 1st-level spell slot, in which case it will temporarily call forth an akop for 1 hour. Due to the madness of the akop, however, the control of the spell is not perfect. The akop is allowed to make a Wisdom saving throw when summoned. On a success, the control of the spell is broken and the akop is free to act in whatever manner their madness dictates. (When in doubt, have them act as if under the effects of a confusion spell.) On a failure, the akop is controlled normally, but may retry the Wisdom saving throw once every 10 minutes.

Second, it can be cast using a 6th-level spell slot to permanently bring a swarm of 1d6+2 akops to the caster’s location. These are not summoned creatures, but have been brought from the Elder Brood into the mortal plane. These akop, too, are difficult to control, although the rites involved in summoning them give them disadvantage on their saving throws. If these akop fail their saving throw, they can reattempt it once per day.

DESIGN NOTES

Although the elder brood are described as being teemless in their variety, only three varieties can be found in the Chaositech sourcebook. So I cracked open one of my favorite bestiaries — Green Ronin’s The Book of Fiends — and started scavenging some of those fantastic monsters, like the akop, to fill out the ranks of the elder brood. The Book of Fiends has been updated for D&D 5th Edition, so it’s quite easy to add these to your own Ptolus campaign, regardless of which edition you’re using.

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They were the least of those that served. They were corruption given flesh; a corpulence of festering death and decay. Rebellious in spirit, yet forever bound to the power of their masters.

This tome describes the zaug – one of the “servitors of the Galchutt”. Physically the zaug were grossly obese humanoids with no hair. They had wide mouths full of teeth, claws for hands, and short horns on their heads. Some are described as possessing vestigial, rotting wings. A few passages describe their bodies as “corrupted receptacles”. Sores and oozing pus and bile covered their fat flesh. And much of their skin hung loose in rotting folds, pocked with holes from which intestines and other guts hung out – spurting vile fluids.

Several passages are given over to describing festering poisons and other vile alchemical substances that could be created from the “bile of the zaug”, although no true details of the required procedures are given.

The flesh of the zaug itself is ever-regenerating – allowing it to survive despite the diseases, poisons, and parasites that teem through its body. They are said to never eat or drink or breathe, and to speak only telepathically.

THE SOULHARVESTERS

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

Where the flesh of the zaug festered, the beruned and corpulent flesh of the soulharvesters was glistening and taut. And pressing out against the green-veined and pallid skin of their guts were the screaming faces of those imprisoned within them.

The “soulfire flesh” of the zaug soulharvesters is described as an immense, living power source.

THE LORE OF THE LATTER YEARS

And while their masters slept, the labors of the zaug were endless.

Later lore describes the zaug working with the “titans of the Purple City” in labors of “the technology of the taint” as they worked to “perfect the crafts gifted from beyond the Demonweb”.

Other passages refer to the zaug working in the laboratories of Ghul the Skull-King. “And their works turned to the binding and changing of the flesh, and the lesser races were turned into weapons of dark might.”

KASTRALATHAKASAL

And in the sleep of the Galchutt and the sealing of the Vaults of the Rhodintor, the zaug at last found their freedom. And in their caverns of the deep, their works turned inward.

Deep beneath the surface of the earth, it is said that Kastralathakasal – the City of the Zaug – “stands citadel upon the Throne of Darkness”. The city itself is described as a stronghold of alien metals and living, organic components.

DESIGN NOTES

The zaug originally appeared in the Chaositech sourcebook and play a significant role in Monte Cook’s Ptolus. The Soulharvesters, however, were originally Solamith demons created for the D&D 3rd Edition Monster Manual V. (They made the leap to 4th Edition, but there doesn’t appear to be an official adaptation for 5th Edition, which is unfortunate in my opinion.)

Given the great plentitude of monsters available for D&D, this is a technique I frequently use. It’s similar to The Campaign Stitch, but rather than melding adventures it takes monsters and asks: What if these are the same monster?

It’s kind of like palette shifting, but rather than taking one stat block and using it to model a multitude of creatures, this technique — monster melding — takes a bunch of different stat blocks and brings their lore together. I like it because it transforms a vast-but-shallow funhouse filled with an incomprehensibly huge variety of beasties and instead uses it for depth. The zaug and the solamith are both interesting in their own right; but their sum, in my opinion, is greater than the sum of their parts: By putting them into a relationship with each other, both of them become more interesting and versatile.

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