Variety is the spice of life, and the meat and potatoes for the adventuring sage.
On a distant world named Midgard there lives a kind of insect that I think surely must have come from one of the lawfully aligned other planes of existence and been transported to other dimensions just because of its usefullness.
That insect is called the Suturefly, it has many other titles, stitchbug, tyrant fly and deathweaver are among them, the Suturefly at rest, perched on some plant is quite good at blending in, their long body is mostly a drab green color with their wings folded back, something that dragonflies don't generally do, as that is what the Suturefly most resembles, comparisons are handy, they do look like larger dragonflies except they have three pairs of wings, which have a brighter orange color that is on display when the wings are in use, with a transparent stripe just before the tip of each wing. While six inches or fifteen centimeters doesn't sound big, its certainly large for a flying insect coming right at your face at high speed, believe me, some rumours persist about giant specimens found in deep, ancient woodland like the Old Margreve forest with ten foot wingspans, but those are most likely not naturally that size and serve as battle mounts for some of the more dangerous fey folk. I am not about to venture into the deep Margreve to find out for myself, not unless I am invited. I intend to make it into the deep forest at some point, those fey are just one thing I care to learn more about, and pass those details on to you, of course.
The local people if Midgard are a very diverse lot, one group I was eager to meet were the Halflings, and sure enough, it was during one of their rare legal trials that I happened to wander into their community center, which was also a general goods store of some size that remained open for business while all the local halflings decided the fate of some halfling farmer who had stolen a bunch of sheep, which would not have been a big deal, but people got hurt bringing the matter to justice and he was also on trial for assualting the local wardens, a much more serious offence as those wardens were the much loved sons of the local folk hero and, it so happens, the local magistrate. Despite that conflict of interest, it was a fair trial and it turns out the wardens did goad the sheep rustler and threatened his family. I was shocked to hear the young warden admitting this, I mean, there is honest and then there is admitting behavior that might get him removed from the local wardens... curious, I got in among the crowd to get a better look at what was going on, and that was when I saw and heard the hovering Sutureflies, each of them was flying just above a little decorated wooden coffer that they had been released from, I couldn't see any physical thing keeping them hovering there, so perhaps they were enchanted and under someone's control.
Fascinated and having never seen them before, I nudged a local and asked what they were and why they were there, as they looked pretty, but kind of dangerous.
Oh yes, I was assured, they are very dangerous, the Suturefly can kill you, sure enough.
I couldn't believe the outcome of this trail could mean death though, and I was right, the local shook his head, no no, he might get banished but its likely here he just has to do some community service, like road work or mending the stone fences around the paddocks. The Sutureflies were there to ensure that everyone told the truth as they attack anyone who tells a lie near them. This was stunning news! Were the insects intelligent? No not really, they have the same behavior as Dragonflies, though they don't reproduce around water, they are forest canopy insects who weave nests from living leaves to protect their eggs. They eat large figs that have caustic juice but are not acid spitters or anything, they don't even have mouthparts suitable for biting and have no harmful poison stinger, they are not coated in poison, they are just very fast, accurate and have turned their leaf weaving into a deadly weapon.
Outside of agriculture, that was about all the local knew about Sutureflies. He just said the flies knew when someone spoke a lie because these ones in the trail were of the particular breed maintained by the wardens. There were other types of sutureflies, and they detected other spoken misdeeds, such as attacking anyone who blasphemes.
How do they attack? I asked.
I needn't of bothered, at that moment the Sutureflies surrounding the sheep rustler buzzed and charged at him all at once, flying around and pestering him severely, they were attacking his head, which was twisting and jerking around, his screams became horribly muffled and he collapsed onto the ground, thrashing his legs and clawing at his face with his fingers. The two bailiffs hauled him up onto a rope-cutting bench and carefully sliced into his face with their daggers, wadding clean cloth over his profusely bleeding head.
That's how, said the local, in the dry wit of the hobbits.
Oh, 'Suture' Fly, they literally stitched his mouth, nose, and eyes closed! But that still didn't answer how they could detect a spoken lie.
The stitching behavior has a simple biological explanation, it is clear that the weaving prowess of the insects is how they choose their breeding partners and, much like the peacock's tail, has resulted in a very extreme ability to weave objects together using nothing more than piercing the flesh repeatedly and threading a loop of the target's own skin through the previous hole. Contact with the insect causes these skin loops to blacken, shrink and draw the stitch closed tightly, it requires careful attention to cut open these suture stitches and is intensely painful for the victim, who may not be able to breathe while this is being done, so sometimes it's necessary to stab a breathing hole in their windpipe to save their life.
But, how do they detect lies, or other verbal offences?
Turns out, there was no complex biological reason for that, they were essentually granted this power by the gods, which is not that uncommon on Midgard, the gods play quite an active role there, including having children with mortals and often physically manifesting among them. Midgard is not a planet, its a gigantic disc of land floating on a sea of living stars, the land has powerful ley lines the locals use for a lot of their magic and all of them seem to know that they live on a flat surface, with mountains and all that stuff, but they are fine with the fact their world has an actual edge and no, they have no idea what is on the underside of their world. Such environments are not that weird, the Old Ones seem to have had a phase where they made a lot of Discworlds for some reason, who knows? The old ones are mysterious, very mysterious, beware that mystery, for that is how they hook you into a descent into obsessions and madness.
Midgard has humans, dwarves, elves, kobolds, minotaurs and gearforged, plus centaurs, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, tieflings and hobbits, it also has a dragon empire and a rich history. The Midgard world setting was written for the Pathfinder ruleset and was created by Wolfgang Baur, a prodigious writer in the RPG industry, he published it originally in 2012 and you can pick up a PDF copy for twenty bucks on DrivethruRPG. All of the Tome of Beasts books and the Creature Codex are written for Pathfinder, have now been fully converted to 5th edition D&D versions with notes on how they fit into the midgard setting, but you can pop them into your game setting as you see fit. There are hundreds of monsters, creatures and such to cover, so if you are interested in more monster ecologies and lore explorations, and expansions for kobold press books, let me know in the comments below the video.
If you happen to frequent the DnDBeyond web site, you can purchase access to the Tomb of Beasts volume one, it says, and I quote "Numerous suturefly varieties exist. Some attack based on verbal triggers other than lies. Black-banded sutureflies, for instance, detect curses and religious blasphemies. When attacking, sutureflies dart from hiding to surprise opponents. Once they sew someone’s mouth closed, they target the same victim’s nose, unless threatened by another opponent. Sutureflies attack until they have sewn all of their opponents’ mouths, eyes and noses closed or until they’re destroyed." and I see here that they are also known to sew the eyes of Dryads shut to protect them against the evils of Civilization.
What twisted being enchanted an entire species and numerous sub-species to use their weaving ability with such ferocity? I am thinking its a fey lord of some kind, not Baba Yaga, but probably someone or something just as formidable.
The Tomb of Beasts lists the Suturefly as a Tiny Beast without evil intent, I think they would work just as well as a swarm for higher level player characters, it would give them a bit more agility as they would be able to occupy the same space as another creature. Sutureflies have an armor class of 12, 10 hit points, a flight speed of 40 feet per round, they can make one Sew action each round, +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or the suturefly sews the target’s mouth, nose, or one of its eyes closed (the suturefly’s choice). With supernatural speed, the suturefly repeatedly pierces the target’s face, each time threading a loop of the target’s own skin through the previous hole. These skin loops rapidly blacken, shrink, and draw the orifice tightly closed. If a target’s mouth is sewn shut, it can’t speak. If its mouth and nose are sewn shut, it can’t breathe, and if both eyes are sewn shut, it is blinded. A creature, including the target, can take its action to cut open one of the sewn orifices by succeeding on a DC 12 Dexterity check with an edged weapon or tool.
They have +4 to stealth checks, and make them with advantage while in forest terrain. They will rest high up on a tree trunk just below the leaf canopy and watch you... waiting and listening.
So, you know, carefull with the idle banter while walking through deep forests, you never know who or what is listening.
My name is AJ Pickett, thanks for listening and as always, I will be back with more for you very soon.
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