Kamadan - Dungeons and Dragons - Monster Ecology

I recently received a very rare and special package that was found on a Thayan trade vessel intercepted by some freebooters on the Shining Sea, the crate arrived at the keep and nobody seemed to pay it much interest aside from me and a Modrone called Kwod who had recently arrived at the keep and was being inducted by the little squad of monodrones who worked on the stacks, sorting one book at a time, as is their way. I just happened to be sitting in the late afternoon light, enjoying a rather bawdy tale from the Sage of Shadowdale when there was a commotion and Kwod broke open a very sturdy wooden crate, with a dinstinctive ear popping pressure change of some protective magic being disrupted and bone vibrating shriek of a magical alarm being set off. Moments later, Kwod was sprinting on its mechanical legs back towards the keep with a large egg in his hands, his large rubbery lipped mouth hooting with excitement as several of the avowed picked up the hems of their robes and gave chase.

Naturally I got involved, as I simply had to know what possessed the Quadrone to do something like that.

Eventually, Kwod skidded to a stop and hammered on the chamber door of Master Sage Kazryn Nyantani, a resident expert in the natural world whom I often spend long evenings discussing the ecologies of creatures. 

It turns out, long story short, that the egg was from the tropical and often treacherous island of Chult, and was the offspring of a monstrous species known on Chult as the Kamadan.

Now, I have been asked, recently, if the these are the same creatures as those found within the jungles of the distant continent of Maztika, all the way across the Trackless Sea, and I can confirm, with certainty that they are not, that species is called the Kamatlan and are as distinctly different as a bobcat is from a mountain lion or a wolf is different from a fox and no, neither one of them is related, in any way, to the Displacer Beast, as a matter of fact, they are one of the few predators that actively hunt down and kill displacer beasts they find in their territory.

Master Sage Nyantani did end up incubating and hatching the Kamadan  cub and named it Asper, and let me tell you, that fiendish furry bastard was cunning, and lethal, absolutely not suitable as a pet unless one is willing to keep the creature under constant, and cruel magical submission, a practice I do not endorse, but in the case of something like a Kamadan, perhaps is better for the greater concern of keeping innocent bystanders alive.

Oh, how cute it was when it hatched! A baby leapord with these cute little snake nubs, all big eyes, soft fur, little toe beans and that long tail, a beautiful pattern on its coat and strong! Asper grew quickly and soon became a legitimate terror, shredding soft furnishings, spraying urine on the walls and attempting to murder several animal companions and, unfortunately, succeeding in the massacre of a small flock of sheep. In only a few months time, Asper was confined to a chamber where illusions on the walls gave the impression of a jungle vista, and fed a live sheep once per week, paid for by the morbidly curious who paid to watch the process.

DO NOT under any circumstances, attempt to enter the enclosure of the Kamadan, for your own safety, as they are capable of knocking other creatures unconcious with the release of a potent sleep gas they can exhale almost like dragon breath.

Before we delve into the details of these creatures and the variant species with very similar names, lets relax, grab ourselves a tasty beverage, its time to get deeply nerdy. Also, thank you to everyone so far this year who have purchased a Deeply Nerdy mug to help support my work, I very much appreciate it and hope you enjoy the design and quality of the item as much as I do.

The Kamatlan of Maztica is a large predator with the body of a Jaguar and two snakes sprouting from either shoulder, it has a rattle on the end of its long tail, just like a rattlesnake.

The Kamadan of Chult is an equally large predator with the body of a Leopard and three snakes growing from either shoulder, and it does not have a rattle on the end of it's tail. 

In most other respects, the creatures are very similar to each other, except I suspect the Kamatlan of Maztica is quite comfortable in the water and a very capable swimmer, and does a lot of its hunting and sleeping in the branches of jungle trees, often striking from above with a deadly snake bite and retreating as the venom does its work. The Kamadan of Chult is far more direct and brutal, springing from the undergrowth with a release of its sleeping gas, before a furious attack with teeth, claws and fangs. They fear no creature aside from something like an adult dragon, though they will retreat from large groups of humans as, particularly in Maztica, they are highly valued by practitioners of Hishna Magic.

Hishna is also known as Talon Magic, it dates back to the days of the empire of Scaley kind and is the divine magic practiced by Maztican priests of the god of war and violence known as Zaltec. Hishna was the magic of claw, fang, and venomous sting. Practitioners are rightly feared for their power to dominate the will of another being hundreds of miles away. Hishna can be used to deliver messages over long distances and can be used to animate objects such as snake skins.

I do wonder if that is why merchants of Thay were going to such lengths to capture such a creature, but who knows?

From what I observed a Kamadan egg takes at least two months to hatch and has a leathery shell, more like a reptile, when hatched they are the size of an adult tressym or flightless cat and they have a pelt that is gray with barely defined spots which suggests they remain in caves and crevices of boulders for protection, they grow to adulthood over two years, I'm not sure if they build a nest, I suspect they will just locate a cave or crevice among boulders and secure their egg there, and given that big cats primary cause of death in the wild is adult males killing offspring  in order to bring the female back into heat they have good reason to leave the cubs to fend for themselves. Kamadan breed at any time of the year in their tropical habitat. Average lifespan in the wild ranges from ten to twenty years.

A full grown Kamadan depends mainly on its acute senses of hearing and vision for hunting, they are active at night and also have an acute sense of smell, thanks to their snake heads also tasting the air with their tongues they can zero in on a scent carried on the wind with uncanny accuracy. While their passive perception is high, it should be noted that they can see in all directions at once, so sneaking up on them is a bad idea. As mentioned the Kamadan will either pounce from concealment on their prey, with a 20 foot run up they can leap at a creature and make a claw strike so powerful that the target must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. If the target is knocked prone, the kamadan can make two attacks — one with its bite and one with its snakes — against it as a bonus action. As they almost always hunt alone and are quite fearless, they will attack groups of humanoids, in which case The kamadan exhales sleep gas in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in that area must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or fall unconscious for 10 minutes. This effect ends for a creature if it takes damage or someone uses an action to wake it.

The 5th edition Kamadan's attacks per round are much reduced from previous editions and don't do justice to how they can take down a whole team of adventurers in a solo brawl, see, not only do they get a bite and claw attack, they get to attack with each of their snake heads, so, nine attacks per round and they can choose multiple targets to engage on adjacent positions around it. All strikes are +5 to hit and do 1d6+3 damage, the claws do slashing damage, the jaws do piercing damage, as do the snake bites, but the snakes also force the target to make a DC12 Constitution check or inflict 6d6 poison damage, or half that damage if they succeed. They are large in size, something like 3 feet tall at the shoulder, so larger than any Leopard, its more than likely that there are melanistic kamadan, with an all black coloration, in which case I would call it a Kamadan Panther.

They are strong and agile monstrous predators able to leap 20 feet horizontally and 10 feet straight up, quite impressive with a bodyweight of 250 pounds, the males can get even larger and females are almost always smaller. They have a hunting range of around 15 miles and humanoids are attacked by them almost exclusively at dawn or dusk, particularly when making camp in the evening or breaking camp in the morning.

Not a pleasant way to start the day in a sweltering jungle.

I've not seen any Kamadan kept as pets on my travels, but they are sought after by the church of Malar, and to the right buyer, I would say you could earn a couple of thousand gold coins just for an unhatched egg of a Kamadan or Kamatlan, but I do advise you to be very cautious when dealing with that particular faith, as they are always looking for cheap meat to feed their monstrous menageries.

Mind you don't end up on their menu.

My name is AJ Pickett, thanks for joining me and as always, I will be back with more for you, very soon.

Eye of the Deep - Dungeons and Dragons - Monster lore

As I prepared for a visit to the Tritons, who dwell in a secluded and very deep ocean rift region of the Sea of Swords nearby the Moonshae isles and a few miles as the Gull flies off the coastal cliffs from Candlekeep, I took some time to research one of the more rare and dangerous aberrations of the sea, known as the Eye of the Deep. Thankfully, I located a document in the archives from one Ed of the Greenwood, published originally on the planet Earth in a thing called Dragon Magazine, er, issue number 93 printed in January 1985, which is some time in the future by Dale reckoning of years, but from the perspective of Earth people, is now exactly 40 years ago, however, as confusing as this is already to any scholar, this is not the original text, as someone has made some annotations and changed whole bits of this document to update it with the strange mathematical gibberish that so often fills these startlingly accurate articles. I swear, one of these days, I will find this Greenwood fellow prowling around the realms somewhere as we investigate the same creature by sheer coincidence.

Nothing would delight me more; he seems like quite a friendly fellow.

What is strange is the article purports to be compiled from a discussion at a meeting of sages in Hillsfar led by Auvras the Enquirer, who was a real person from my point of view, but to the people of the earth, is a being of fiction!  Don't ask me to make sense of it, I refuse to. Now, before I read this to you, please go grab yourself a tasty beverage, it is time to get deeply nerdy.

The eye of the deep is a creature of legend; though it truly exists, few trained observers have seen it, and fewer still have studied it at length in its habitat, the ocean depths. Several among us tonight have done so, and can answer many mysteries.

Many have speculated that the eye of the deep is related to the beholder, and it is our considered opinion that it is indeed a related species; perhaps both were once the same creature and evolved differently to master the vastly different environments.

The eye of the deep is a solitary predator, catching most of its victims by use of its power to stun its prey with a blinding flash of light from the large eye in the center of its roughly spherical body.

Intended victims of the eye-flash stun must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. Targets that are blindfolded, hooded, or unable to see in the visible spectrum cannot be stunned. A darkness spell will provide an effective screen against such flashes. However, most defenses require more time to put in place than the stunning flash of the eye requires to “fire”; and an eye of the deep will recognize any defensive preparations for what they are, in a magic shoot-out, the Beholder is always going to win, as it is not casting spells, its directly channeling raw magical power. A stunned creature is incapacitated, can't move, finds it very difficult to speak, and automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage. Unless the victim succeeds with a DC 15 Constitution saving throw on any of their following turns, this condition can last from one to four minutes.

The effect of repeated eye-flashes is not cumulative; a stunned victim cannot be “more stunned.” The creature can use its stun power for as many as five rounds in succession but then must rest the eye-flash power for an equal number of rounds before it can be used again. Saving against this stun flash does not provide immunity to future stun attempts from that or any other beholder, so the Eye of the Deep makes good use of it and can quickly overcome a group of enemies who happen to have some bad luck with their dice rolls.

The eye of the deep can use its physical attacks (pincers and teeth) in the same round that it emits an eye-flash. It will go after stunned creatures in preference to other nearby prey only if it thinks that the “unstunned” targets present no immediate threat to itself. The creature will attempt to grab prey with one or both of its pincers and then bring the victim up to its mouth. A bite attack is made at advantage against a victim held by one or both pincers, the benefit of grabbing a victim with both pincers is that the victim is also restrained, meaning attack rolls made against it from any source will have advantage, the victim's own attacks are made at disadvantage and this penalty also applies to any dexterity checks, plus they can't move, reducing their speed to zero.

If the creature takes damage in a given melee round, it will release its hold on anything in its pincers; otherwise, prey that is being held by one or more pincers will continue to take 2d6 + 2 piercing damage from each pincer until it dies or the hold is broken. A victim held by only one pincer can (if not stunned or otherwise immobilized) can wrest itself out of the pincer’s grasp witha DC 15 Strength check. An eye of the deep will attack prey that is considerably larger than itself (such as a giant squid) but is intelligent enough only to do so when it has an advantage and is not in immediate danger of being severely hurt. This is a common trait of most Eye's of the Deep, making them sometimes act in a manner that seems cowardly, but in fact, it is just shrewd self-preservation.

Even if prey is not thus restrained, the eye of the deep can bring its two large pincers into play to grab and rend its victims. These pincers can shred creatures much larger than the “eye” itself, and octopi, giant squids, and the huge cruising fish of the depths form the bulk of the creature’s diet. It prizes most highly sinking ships, for it breaks into the disintegrating hulls of these (aided by the intense pressure of deep water), and dines upon the tasty bodies of surface creatures trapped inside. It cannot rise into shallow waters after such prey, because the less intense water pressure at shallow depths causes its body (and internal gases) to expand, and ultimately explode apart. (For this reason, the corpse of an “eye” reaches the surface very rarely; the distorted fragments of its rent body sink back to the bottom, or are devoured by shallow-water marine life.)

To compensate for their inability to travel in shallow waters, eyes of the deep sometimes cooperate with sahuagin for short periods and specific undertakings, usually demanding as payment the bodies of many surface dwellers.

(This dietary preference is one of the many hints at a common origin of both the eye of the deep and the beholder.)

Metallic treasure is often ingested by an eye of the deep, but does not harm the creature, and remains in its stomach until it accumulates to uncomfortable proportions, whereupon it is regurgitated forth in the eye’s lair. All eyes make themselves a lair in an undersea grotto (slaying any previous occupants, if necessary) far from the lairs of other eyes of the deep and as near to abundant food as possible (such as beneath heavily traveled shipping routes, or in areas of storms or shoals). An eye may well have its lair guarded by lesser creatures, or by traps (falling nets weighted by stones, and so forth) such as it can manage. An eye’s claws are quite dextrous and can shear through nets, ropes, and the like with speed and accuracy.

Eyes are aggressive, deceitful, and totally self-interested; “loyalty” has little meaning for them, and they will cooperate with creatures of like alignment only when they stand to gain much prey, or are coerced into doing so. Eyes avoid other eyes purely for reasons of practicality, not desiring to die or be badly wounded in a tough fight with an opponent of equal powers.

It should be noted here that the admittedly few observations of such battles indicate that an eye can be affected by another eye’s illusions, but each is immune to another’s stunning power. Eyestalks can be regenerated in six to eleven days when lost, and other body parts (such as its pincers or central eye) regrown in a matter of months — but the rapidity of such growth depends upon the amount of prey an eye can consume, and a seriously wounded eye is a poor hunter due to its slow natural speed.

Eyes of the deep are highly maneuverable when swimming, due to their many underside “feelers” — flexible, sticky body strands which can act as paddles when swimming, “walk” along rocks or other solid objects, hold prey, and so on. An eye grows new feelers constantly, and feelers are continually lost or damaged by its activities, so that an eye’s underside is a tangled forest of whitish, mauve-mottled feelers, all of differing lengths and diameters. Hidden amongst the many feelers are a few “strands” devoted to reproduction — long feelers that hold the eye’s eggs like peas in a pod.

All of the feelers except for the few reproductive “strands” can be made sticky by the secretion of a gluelike fluid, and made “un-sticky” by the emission of an alcohol-like solvent that counteracts the glue. The former process requires one round and must be performed before the feelers can be used to manipulate objects or provide traction on a solid surface. The latter process takes only one segment and must be performed before the creature can again use the feelers to help it move through the water. The feelers can grab and manipulate any object as large and heavy as a human body, but the creature cannot hold such an object and move under its own power at the same time; as such, the feelers are almost exclusively used either for locomotion, or to anchor the eye of the deep to a solid surface while it awaits the approach of prey.

The reproductive “strands” have none of the properties of the other feelers. They are very few in number (3-6 out of a total of 60-90 feelers) and are continually replaced or regrown like the other feelers. Once every two months, an egg is produced in each strand; when a strand accumulates 6-11 eggs, it splits open lengthwise and deposits the contents into the surrounding water.

Each egg is spherical, about 6 inches in diameter, with a tough but flexible shell that enables it to withstand water pressure and moderately hard blows without cracking.

Periodically, these egg-holders rupture, depositing their cargoes on the ocean bottom or in the powerful currents of the deeps. Any other eye of the deep can fertilize these eggs; the creatures are bisexual but cannot fertilize their own eggs. (An eye will fertilize another eye’s eggs instinctively whenever it recognizes the eggs for what they are.

Fertilized eggs fall to the ocean bottom, if they were not there already, and lie there until they hatch or die. Few fertilized eggs survive to see the end of their maturation period because they are seldom left undisturbed by other denizens of the deep. Fewer still are fertilized in the first place, since they can only be left adrift for two months after being released from the nutrient-rich “strands”; after that time they become inert and infertile. For these reasons, few eyes of the deep are born, and this monster is thankfully very rare.

Only 50% of all fertilized eggs actually hatch (and only 20% of all eggs released by an eye of the deep are ever fertilized).

Hatchlings are weak swimmers (speed 15 ft.), Medium sized (2-foot diameter), with 2d6 + 2 hit points. They have only 11-20 feelers and no strands, and their pincers and teeth are softer and weaker (1d4 + 1 piercing damage) than those of full-grown eyes of the deep. Their stun attack lasts for only 1-4 rounds, and targets get advantage on their saving throw to avoid the effect. Young creatures cannot create illusions or use the hold powers of their still-immature eyestalks. At the age of one year, an eye of the deep specimen will have 8-10 hit dice, move 30 ft., and the full range of attacks that a mature creature has, with a 3-foot-diameter body and 40-60 feelers, but still no strands. Full physical maturity is attained within 2-3 years after hatching.

Hatchlings are rapidly dispersed by ocean currents and typically hide, feeding on bottom life, carrion, and small fish for a year or more, slowly growing to full size and powers. As an eye grows, it actually splits its skin, shedding the tough, chitinous outer armor plates of its body to reveal soft, new, larger plates within. It eats discarded plates to regain lost body minerals and begin building a new layer of plates within itself once more. When an eye reaches physical maturity, its body processes shift to regeneration rather than continual growth.

Thus, lost or damaged plates are repaired by the secretion of new material from within. Young eyes cooperate with other creatures more readily than do the more wary older ones. An eye can communicate with all other intelligent creatures by means of telepathy however, the telepathy ability of an eye of the deep will work only any creature with high animal intelligence or greater within a 60-foot range.

Eyes of the deep know the tongue of many lawful evil species, and usually sahuagin, ixitxachitl, common, or (5% chance) some other tongue. Knowledge of these languages is acquired by telepathy; an eye of the deep cannot understand or communicate with a creature that is using a language the eye does not know.

Perhaps the most fascinating and dangerous ability of an eye of the deep is its mastery of illusions. These it can create and hold with practiced concentration, for a literally unlimited duration (since eyes never sleep). Such illusions will end when the eye wills it, or when one of its eyestalks is blinded by battle damage or some other mishap (apparently, both must be intact for it to create and focus clear illusions), or when one or both of the eyes is used for its other purpose (the magic of hold person and hold monster spells).

An eye can move its created illusion about, and the image appears three-dimensional. An eye can remain in hiding and manipulate an illusion it cannot see.

This skill is assumed to be simply a result of practice; the creatures employ illusions constantly from maturity to death (improving their skill as they age), except for the few times when their eyestalks are incapacitated or otherwise occupied. A typical tactic of the creature is to lure prey to its vicinity with an illusion and then use the light-blast of its large central eye to stun the victim.

The illusionary image created by an eye of the deep is equivalent to a major image spell (PHB p. 258) with a range of 120 feet and an area of effect equal to a 10-foot cube or equivalent volume (enough to simulate a Medium-sized creature or a small school of fish). Any creature of average or higher intelligence that attempts to disbelieve such an illusion obtains a Wisdom (Insight) check, and if the check is successful, then that creature can add advantage to the saving throws of companions.

An eye of the deep can sense vibrations or unusual currents in the water emanating from as far as 120 feet away; the creature has darkvision out to a range of 60 feet and can smell blood or sweat in the water from up to 30 feet away.

The hold person and hold monster powers of the creature’s secondary eyes are treated as spells from a 6th-level spellcaster for determination of range and area of effect. Each of the secondary eyes has one of these spell-like powers, i.e., either one cannot use either power. The eye of the deep can employ one or the other of these powers in any given round, but not both in the same round, and can use each power as often as three times per day. Remember that whenever the eye of the deep uses one of its hold powers, it cannot create an illusion at the same time, and any illusion that had existed is dispelled.

All well and good, a fine document and rich in details, I do have a few more to add though.

To many, the Eye of the Deep is known as the Seaholder, which is amusing enough to be gaining popularity, and I must stress that these creatures are much larger in the flesh than people often think they are, most dungeon passages are not actually ten feet wide, they are five feet at best, so Beholders find most humanoid constructed habitats to be very cramped and weirdly restricted to these flat sprawls with jagged ramps and things to compensate for the fact they can't fly. Constructing structures for themselves, Beholders prefer sheer rises, wide shafts and a lot of plummeting drops that humanoids find quite difficult and dangerous to navigate. Beholders also feel no need to concern themselves with what is going on with the ground, so pit traps, pools of acid, tripwires and all sorts of ground hazards are employed as basic security against humanoids, one of the common pest species from their point of view, humanoids are not much different from any other vermin.

Seaholders are also known to entertain themselves using their power to project illusions and delight in sadistic games where they act very much like the ringmaster, or, dungeon master, if you will, of their lair, using combinations of illusions, treacherous terrain, other nasty creatures that share their lair and items from their collection of loot from past victims. The very last thing they want is to face an opponent that is any real threat to them, so while they are not as smart as other beholders, they make use of their abilities in ways a lot more creative than you would expect and its very hard to face them without also dealing with many other things that divide your attention, your abilities and your power to harm them. Beware also that as with all beholder kin, there is variation in every individual, no two are exactly alike, unless that happens to be their special quirk, but as the Dungeon master, feel free to modify the base traits of any Eye of the Deep or any other beholderkin, to make encountering them, predictably unpredictable.

The Ever-After - Dragon Magazine Short Story

Bazim Gorag - Slaad Lord of Destruction - Dungeons and Dragons Lore - Fo...

The Origin of the Slaadi, the ancient Batrachi and the lord of Destruction, Bazim-Gorag

Firedrake Dragonet - Dungeons and Dragons - Fiend Folio

From the pages of the 1981 Fiend Folio, the Firedrake is a member of the Dragonet species, they are often mistaken for young red dragons, citizens of Cormyr are quite familiar with the creatures as they populate the Stonelands and the Goblin Marches, but you can find them all over the place, they prefer rocky terrain, hills or mountains, quite difficult territory to navigate and usually away from well-travelled paths and roads of the forgotten realms. Of most concern to many adventurers though, is the empathic abilities of the Dragonets, which includes the pseudodragon and faerie dragon species. 

Though often mistaken for a young red dragon, the firedrake is neither as powerful nor as intelligent as its larger cousin. Yet this diminutive dragonet, standing just over two feet tall and measuring four feet from snout to tail, commands respect and caution in equal measure as its incendiary blood packs a hell of a punch, as we shall soon see. Its translucent hide, mottled with mauve and burgundy splotches over a crimson underlayer, ripples with restless energy, its wings ever in motion, even while at rest. The firedrake radiates nervous energy and palpable heat, shimmering in waves off its sleek form. It is a creature in perpetual motion, a bundle of nerves wrapped in pyrophoric scales, ready to erupt into flame at the slightest provocation.

Despite this, its not really that aggressive if left undisturbed, its just that the odds are 50/50 that merely entering the immediate vicinity of one or a group of them is going to provoke a shot of their highly combustable blood in your direction, and that stuff is impressively destructive for such a little critter.

The firedrake is a perfect miniature of its draconic relatives, sharing the distinctive ridges, frilled wings, and angular head of a red dragon. However, it is thinner, nowhere near as strong as even a hatchling red dragon and it's usually very hungry, they have a less stable elemental connection within their blood, some believe this is a sign that they branched off the family tree quite early on and are related to a now extinct precursor species of the true dragons, a much larger, flight capable fire drake that may have already been present on Toril and many other worlds, spread there by magical means a very long time ago. Nobody seems to know for certain. 

Its ever-beating wings are more than a quirk of temperament; they serve vital physiological functions. The slow, rhythmic motion cools its overheated body and wards off the incessant biting insects attracted by the heat and smell of the dragonet’s blood. This nervous fidgeting extends to its behavior—firedrakes are skittish creatures, darting about, very agile over rocky terrain and very mobile in combat, despite their small size they move 20 feet per round on the ground and have a flight speed of 30 feet, but make use of dash actions frequently.

A firedrake’s aggression is not born of malice but of pure survival instinct, they have to take on any prey they can eat and humanoids are within their range of animal sizes that they take on in the wild anyway. Like  honey badger, they are tenacious and will fight to the death if they have not eaten in days. They don't make claw attacks, can't make tail or wing strikes, but they have a pretty nasty bite and are quick to use it, dispatching most of their smaller prey without ever needing to use their breath weapon.

If a pack of up to 8 Firedrakes take down a humanoid, they will start eating their prey alive, a sight that is not pleasant to witness, particularly if its you they are dining on.

To attack with their flaming breath, they open up a blood-filled organ within themselves and eject a powerful jet of it that ignites immediately on contact with air and rips out a line of intense fire. The line of fire is 60-foot (18.3 meters) long and  10 feet (3 meters) wide and requires those caught in its path to do a a decent difficulty Dexterity test to avoid getting full damage, in the Fiend folio this was 2d8 points of damage, which I think is fine for 5th edition as well.

 For hunting, this breath weapon is used to smoke out small burrowing animals from holes and crevices in the rocky terrain they prefer, so the majority of their aggression goes into that formidable bite, as their claws are always busy, running, leaping and digging their way into the nests of their prey, but, they also fly very well, so they hunt birds, eat eggs, eat a lot of rock lizards and the occasional tressym, sorry to say, so, if you have a couple of mages meet and they have a tressym and a firedrake as their familiars, things can get very chaotic, very quickly, and you better have some means to put out a lot of fires. The Firedrakes don't gave to eject a full burst of their blood, they reserve the high powered and draining shots for real threats, and humanoids are certainly their most dangerous natural foes.

One of the reasons humanoids hunt them is that the firedrake’s blood, volatile and phosphorescent, is a valuable commodity. When properly preserved in airtight containers or submerged in water or inert liquid, it can be used as a firebomb or as an enchanting material for weapons. A blade dipped in firedrake blood ignites into a flaming sword for 3-6 rounds, though this can ruin the temper on a masterwork weapon and even cause an magic weapon to lose its enchantment, so its wiser to use it on a more mundane, cheaper weapon.

 Any exposure to air will set the blood off, so in combat, any slashing or piercing wound risks exposing the creature’s ichor to air, creating a flare of fire that scorches the attacker. Adventurers wielding bladed weapons against a firedrake must dodge out of the way with a dexterity test or suffer 1-2 points of fire damage for each successful hit.

In aerial combat, the firedrake employs its small size and agility to great effect. It favors attacking from below and behind, using its breath weapon and the radiant heat of its body to disrupt the flight patterns of larger, less maneuverable foes. Smaller creatures are often rammed mid-air, a calculated gamble that seeks to stun the target and send it plummeting to the ground.

Despite these advantages, the firedrake is far from invulnerable. Its thin hide is tough by lizard standards but offers little protection against physical attacks by other dragons, and it lacks the innate resistance to magic possessed by true dragons. They are totally immune to fire of course, so can take refuge in blazing heat within volcanic areas, though they do still need to breathe, so they can't hide in an inferno or lava flow for very long, as they will suffocate or drown fairly quickly.

Firedrakes are typically found in regions of high ambient temperature—volcanic landscapes, desert mesas, or arid rocky outcrops. The heat of these environments complements their physiology, allowing them to maintain their energy without expending as much effort to keep their blood aflame, but they can be found is all sorts of remote rocky areas, they are tenacious and hardy creatures.

Mated pairs of firedrakes are fiercely territorial, staking out lairs beneath rocky overhangs or in small cavelets. They guard their nests with obsessive vigilance, especially during the early summer months when their clutch of six to eight eggs begins to incubate. These eggs, kept warm by the radiant heat of their parents’ bodies, hatch after 60 days.

Hatchlings are even more temperamental than their adult counterparts, spouting jets of fire at the slightest provocation. While they are capable of producing flame before they can even walk, their first flight does not occur until roughly two months after hatching. By the following spring, the young are pushed out of the family lair, often traveling great distances in search of a mate and a territory of their own.

Though fiercely loyal to their mates, male firedrakes will occasionally engage in fiery territorial disputes during the mating season. These spectacular clashes rarely end in death, as one participant usually concedes and retreats before lethal damage is dealt, but they can immolate a lot of vegetation in the process if they decide to fight among some trees or some nobles garden in the outskirts of Cormyr or Sembia and occasionally a merchant ship hugging the coast will have its sails set on fire.

Firedrakes do not gather treasure, nor do they take any special care to remove the remains of their prey from their lairs. However, their nests often contain the charred remnants of weapons, armor, or valuables carried by unfortunate adventurers.

Firedrakes live comparatively short lives for draconic creatures, averaging between 75 and 100 years. Their bodies are marvels of adaptation, with their blood burning constantly within their veins. This internal fire gives rise to their shimmering heat aura but comes at a cost: the creature’s oxygen requirements are exceptionally high. Deprived of air, a firedrake will suffocate in half the time of a similarly sized creature. They also have eyes that glow and if they are active at night, only during the summer when hunting for their brood, they glow with a deep red gleam in the dark.

Some notes, they make pretty good familiars, they can be bonded with magically, though without magic they are terrible pets and almost impossible to train, fire giants love keeping them around, considering them cute and harmless, though firedrakes certainly don't like the firegiants, they will flee if not fed regularly. They were and still are a popular guard animal among the more notorious noble houses of Narfell and the many criminal organisations of the far east, where they were used once in a serious assualt against the Order of the Yellow Rose. It was a hot night and there was a hell of a lot of kung fu fighting.. those drakes were fast as lightning, and now you have that song stuck in your head.

I've converted the firedrake to 5th edition stats in the description section below the video, and linked to the web resource I often use to help do so, its not as difficult as you might think.

My name is AJ Pickett, as always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.

Tween - Dungeons and Dragons lore - Fiend Folio

Welcome, if you thought that this is going to be a video about a silly D&D monster from the 1980's, yes and no? Even I was shocked at how deep this rabbit hole goes, so, lets go.

The Tween first appears in Dungeons and Dragons history within the pages of White Dwarf Magazine issue number 8, it was designed and submitted by Ian Waugh, Ian also created the infamous Pervert class for Dungeons & Dragons, published in White Dwarf 1, and also contributed to Owl & Weasel, Owl and Weasel was a newsletter for board gamers, role-playing gamers and wargamers, published in London, England, by Games Workshop. A total of 25 issues were published from February 1975 until April 1977; it was edited by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. It was superseded by White Dwarf magazine. To be perfectly honest, I never knew this newsletter existed until just now either, and now I desperately need to find and add all of them to my vast trove of knowledge. It launched initially to complement and advertise Games Workshop's original business of producing and selling hand-crafted wooden board games, most interesting is issue number six, dedicated entirely to the new game of Dungeons and Dragons. Can I get hold of every digital copy of a newletter published and sent out to only 200 people 50 years ago? Heh heh... Hold my mead!

Link in the description below the video to all 25 issues, enjoy!

The Tween as a concept is based on the writing of Clifford D. Simak, one of the classic pulp science fiction and fantasy writers my father had on his bookshelf when I was a child; Simak was a good friend to Isaac Asimov and generally well-regarded by everybody. Simak's stories often took place in rural settings with a more backwoods and common man protagonist and there is a dry sense of humor to the tales, he really stands out to me in his theory on time travel, being a proponent of the multiverse theory, just like Rick and Morty, one is not traveling to the past, as there is no such place, rather, one moves to a close parallel dimension, one in which events take place later, thus it seems like one has stepping into the past but its some alternate reality, not your past anymore. In his popular novel 'Time and Again', a traveler from Earth crashes on a planet; he is then nurtured by ethereal duplicates that seem to accompany every sentient being throughout life. These are the so-called Halflings (not those halflings) that form the core concept of the Tween for The 1981 Fiend Folio entry on page 91, though there is a bit of a difference between the description of the Tween in White Dwarf magazine and the Fiend Folio and also Simak had a similar incorporeal species of far future human-alien hybrids in his novel 'Highway of Eternity' and now I am left pondering which is closer to the Tween concept.

So, settle back, grab yourself a tasty beverage it's time to get deeply nerdy.

Oh you thought we were in the rabbit hole already? No no, I'm just getting started.

The following information is sourced mainly from Planescape and is the only official lore detailing where the mysterious and elusive Tween came from. Thousands of years ago a planar species called the Kyleen ruled a city-state in the concordant plane of the Outlands in the location where the Gate town called Xaos now stands, Outlands is the massive sort of disc world below the multiplanar nexus city of Sigil, regarded by many to be the center of the multiverse, if there is such a thing as a center. From this central hub of the multiverse, the Kyleen traveled throughout the multiverse as traders, explorers, and planeswalkers. Unfortunately, their downfall came when a great smith performed a grand experiment. He wanted to see if he could sculpt an entire palace out of a dangerously unstable, transmuting substance called Karach, made from the chaos stuff of the plane of Limbo itself. Not only did this not go as intended, transforming the entire edifice into something never seen before or since, but it also spawned a virulent and rapidly spreading infection called the Chaos plague which every single member of the Kyleen race became a victim of. Each victim slowly and painfully turned into an entirely new form of creature and eventually, every single one of them just vanished. We now know that the bulk of the population migrated to the timeless Astral plane, seeking to halt the progress of the chaotic mutation; these became the Devete species; those who sought a cure in the countless demiplanes of the Deep Ethereal plane were never heard from again (so scholar claim), and those who lingered in the Border Ethereal plane became the Tween species.

Does this sound familiar to you? If you know about the Spellweaver species and the god Jergal and the fall of the Netheril empire, you will see a striking similarity to the tactic the Spellweavers regularly employed to wipe out civilisations they considered a threat to their dominance over the multiverse that once was. Yes, that was speculation on my part, but, I thought it was interesting enough to share. I have some more speculation, a little more obscure, for fans of 4th edition lore and the origin of the Quom species, more on that later in the video.

It's difficult to know exactly what the original Kyleen species looked like, but  the Devete stand around five feet tall, lean, with a wiry strength like the Githyanki, they have blue skin, and a long, thin tail like a lizard, they have large, haunting eyes, devoid of motivation, emotion or goals. The Tween when detected and not attached to a host, appear as a vague, misty humanoid silhouette that stands a rather stocky three feet tall, and if you could check the mass of both species, they would be about the same. 

On the Ethereal plane, however, according to the more complete information in the Monstrous Compendium 14 Fiend Folio appendix, we get an exact description and an image of what the Tween actually look like, and they are not pretty. They appear as short, squat and ugly humanoids with stubby arms and legs, and no neck, their eyes, nose and ears are relatively tiny and their pale, blue/white skin is mottled and thick with knotted veins pulsing under the skin along their arms. The look a lot like the Sontarans from Dr Who, but even shorter and with more stubby arms and legs with fingers almost becoming vestigial and they may have piercings in strange places or tattoos of disturbing symbols, they tend to wear a loin cloth and thick belt around their midsection with overlapping skirt and a studded pauldron over one shoulder made from the hide of phase spiders, some also have one or two crystals inset into the belt which seem out of phase with reality, their purpose unclear. Odd streaks of darkness appear and sink under their skin as the weird energy they feed on is drawn into their body,  this occurs when within six feet of the being they are bonded with, this energy seems to flow around and into them, then through and into the Tween, like they are using their host as some sort of collector and catalyst for their strange sustenance, almost like lines of magnetic force but more distorted and irregular, through this distortion, the pale, small glowing eyes of the Tween can see things which are most likely to occur within the next few seconds. See, they feed on Probability. More on that in a moment.

To beings on the Material plane, the Tween is a wraith-like being, more like a smoky outline, and can generally only be seen by anyone in 'phase' with it. Though its outline can be detected if viewed through smoked glass. After several hours with a host they gradually begin to assume the general shape and characteristics of that host, including their size, but, they will always remain a little more squat and stocky in their build.

Here's the other common factor between the Tween and the Devete, they only really display their own behavior and motivations when they gather in a group that is traveling together, unfortunately, they change from being neutral to becoming neutral evil, the worst kind of evil if you ask me, xenophobic and full of murderous malice toward any other intelligent beings they encounter and will attack and kill, the Devete have a particularly nasty bite and produce venom from a mouth full of fangs, the Tween never attack with a bite or claws, they use weapons which they carry with them and attack in a similar way to humanoid adventurers. When encountered alone, though, which is most of the time, the Devete will simply copy the behavior, even the motives of the being they observe closely. If you approach a Devete with the intent to harm it and steal from it, that is exactly how it approaches you, and if you sit and smell flowers and genuinely wish it love, peace, and happiness from a safe distance, that is also exactly how the Devete behaves, they are just.. blank until they encounter another intelligent being and start to emulate that being's behavior, even if an adventurer knows this, it requires a difficult wisdom test to really make oneself believe something strongly enough, and if they don't, well, the Devete will seem like its fallen for it, but now its manipulating the adventurer, the creatures emotional adaptation and mimicry is just too complete. Tweens go a step further; they actually bond with the intelligent being they lock their attention on. Like the Devete, Tween are telepathic, they can sense emotions to a more limited extent, but once they form their bond with another intelligent being, the most intelligent candidate they can find, they will not break that parasitic bond until either they are dead, or the host is, in which case, they will then undergo a literal traumatic split and become two Tween, the original and its duplicate offspring. The two will then go their own ways and seek out another victim to bond with, so, unless you want a plague of them, its best to kill the Tween and not the victims if one can manage it.

But why would you kill them, what is the nature of their bond and why do they do it?

Although they live permanently on the Ethereal plane, Tween are not undead, not even a little bit, they require nourishment and the chaos-plague mutation has provided a remarkable adaptation, not only are the omnivorous, able to eat a wide variaty of organic materials, they actually eat probability, don't ask me how, I don't know, its way outside biological or even arcane science, the effect in the Dungeons and Dragons game are fairly straightforward and easy to represent, particularly in 5th edition. Here is how it works, when they bond with an intelligent being on the prime material plane, they assume the general shape of that individual and always accompany them, staying within six feet and remaining in telepathic contact with them, appearing like a smoky or shadowy outline, once the bond is set, neither the host or the Tween can sever it voluntarily. While bonded, the Tween causes a disruption in reality which causes all luck to be in favor of its host, and all other beings within 50 feet will have bad luck, so, the host rolls every d20 roll with advantage and everyone else, friend or foe within 50 feet rolls with disadvantage. This doesn't trigger other abilities that rely on the host having advantage, like sneak attacks and so on, but it is a massive boon for the host, as you can imagine, this makes them a big problem if they happen to be traveling with a party of fellow adventurers, because unless their allies stay 50 feet away from them, they will roll dismally and quite often, this can be deadly. The host will have to deal with becoming an outcast, very much like the Tween do.

If the host gets killed, the Tween suffers a massive trauma of grief and loss; it literally splits into two individuals; the original will immediately set out to find a new host, and the new Tween will wander around in the Ethereal plane for a while, becoming more and more lonely and miserable. Although they don't have any natural enemies other than phase spiders, apparitions, and other undead and predatory species dwelling in the Border Ethereal, they don't have any allies either, no friends, no support, even other Tweens kind of hate and shun each other, there is almost nothing to eat and it constantly craves that sweet flow of probability, or luck, that it can only get when bonded to a host in the Material plane.

Physically, the Tween are not formidable creatures, they rely on weapons and poorly crafted protective gear that they scavenge or craft by hand, they are not strong or agile, but can keep up with their host and do have a psychic ability that manifests as Mage Hand used like a cantrip, they are not locked to their hosts actions and can fight and defend themselves independently, though they have low hit points and while they can see a few moments into the future, its not a huge tactical advantage other than a remarkable bonus to their Dexterity checks and things like dodging arrows and such.

Tween will rely heavily on their ethereal, non-corporeal defence and their influence on luck, but facing a foe on the Ethereal plane with them, they are far less confident, but unable to flee unless their host does.

So, that's the Tween for you, kind of a sad existence really.

Now, for the 4th edition fans, or those who cherry picked the few bits of good lore that came along, the story of the Dawn War and the callous destruction of the Goddess Lakal and the origin of the Quom is very interesting, I found the Quom one of the more original 4th edition species, and as I was researching the Tween, the Devete and the Kyleen, I thought, what if those Kyleen who fled into the deep Ethereal plane didn't just vanish, what if they created or perhaps found a living, divine demiplane and bonded with it completely? Well, that is the Quom! 

For all the info on that species,  check out my lore video on this channel and explore the depths of the rabbit hole with me.

Khargra - Dungeons and Dragons - Fiend Folio

By popular demand, lets dive into the earth, deep into the earth, the elemental plane of earth to be exact, an environment that is probably the most and least understood, I mean, we know its an infinite plane of three dimensional rock, all kinds of minerals, ores, crystals and rock and earth types, its the dream of every Moradin loving dwarf in existence to one day find some portal to a chasm of endless jewels just clusted to every surface like the richest geode in the universe, to find molten rivers of pure gold and mountains filled with the silver steel of Mithril. 

I have talked about Earth elementals before, how they are energy beings, like spirits made up of units of spirit, collective organisms that feed on each other and can grow into a collective, becoming more powerful, more able to hold together and manipulate raw elemental earth in the shape of their elemental forms when outside of a pure rocky environment, and the more that accumulate the more intelligent and individual the elemental becomes.. well, thats just one form of life within the elemental plane, there are many others, and today, we are going to learn all there is to know about a rarely appearing creature called the Khargra, appearing for the first time in the pages of the 1981 Fiend Folio, created by The Lawrence Schick with an illustration by Erol Otus. Lawrence Schick is the co-author of the original Star Frontiers and has written many other games over his career, he created White Plume Mountain, ranked the 9th greatest Dungeons and Dragons adventure of all time and was the head of TSR that hired Tom Moldcay, so you can thank him for the Red Box D&D Basic set, oh and you may know him recently since he is the Princple Narrative Designer for Baldur's Gate three.. ok, so, THAT Lawrence Schick, an absolute legend, RPG Hall of fame, godfather of the hobby, total badass, he basically created online roleplaying games and his accomplishments and influence are far beyond the scope of this little video.

His creation of the Khargra, the Earth Fish or Rock Piranha if you like, is a window into a whole other strata of life forms existing in the elemental planes and very rarely encountered on other planes and planets within the Prime Material Plane. So lets dive into the ecology of these mysterious and freaky looking critters, settle back, grab yourself a tasty beverage, its time to get deeply nerdy.

The Khargra recently got an update and is included not only in Pathfinder lore, but also 5th edition, thanks to  'Mordenkainen's Fiendish Folio Volume 1: Monsters Malevolent and Benign', saves me a little work converting it (you would think), but we will take a look at that one in a moment.

While they do match many of the physical characteristics of other rock eating creatures from the Elemental plane, such as the Xorn and the Xaren, they are not the same species, some scholars assert the Khargra are the juvenile life stage of these creatures, that's not true.

Each Khargra is the shape of a tube, basically the look like a jet engine crossed with a fish, 3​ to ​4 feet (up to ​1.2 meters) in length, tapering somewhat towards the rear, and covered in large, closely interlocked iron, platinum and other trace mineral alloy metallic scales. The intake mouth is a full foot in diameter, and lined with sharp exotic metal alloy teeth with a curve, being able to shut like an aperture. Three metal fins, large and weirdly flexible, formed of the same sort of alloy as the scales, extend equidistantly from one another like a rocket. Similarly, three conical sheaths containing arms are tucked between the fins. Small eyes bulge out from either side of the top fin. The clawed arms, when fully extended, stretch out to 3 feet (0.91 meters) from the creatures body and are mainly used to latch onto things they are feeding on, and are part of the mating behavior, latching on to each other even while speeding through their native environment. That environment is rock, basically, but encompasses the incredible variety of strata, molten flows and extremely high pressure or density zones of the elemental plane of earth and the quazi-elemental plane of Minerals. They weigh around 300 pounds or 140 kilograms, most of which is their outer layer of metallic fins and scales.

The Khargra's constantly working maw is opens and closes like an iris, the closest equivalent I can think of is the tiny rotifers found in fresh water on Toril. The maw draws in earth, absorbing the required elements and ejecting the rest out the back, hurling the creature forward so they seem to fly through solid ground at a speed of 30 to 35 feet per round, this speed also allows them to shoot out of the ground and sail for 10 feet through the air before landing, a tactic they will use to pounce on a food source or escape a predator chasing after them in their solid world.

Their feeding changes the consistency of the rock to a softer gravel behind them and its possible for a skilled individual to identify and track them this way, if they have the means to follow them. This can, in some cases, be damaging to structures that rely heavily on their strength, such as fortifications, but it would take some bad (or good) luck for the Khargra to cause really significant damage or a catastrophic collapse all at once, they don't do that sort of damage with ill intent, they are naturally quite neutral creatures with a low intelligence and just follow instinctual behavior. So, don't fill your castle walls with gold and stuff, that would be my advice, and don't build such structures in the migratory path of the Khargra schools.

So, yes, they are migratory, they have an interesting life cycle, they almost always travel in small schools, there will be a larger one, I'm not sure if its a male or female, in fact, we don't know how their genders work at all, they have none, they might have three or be like the cuttlefish, with different types of males, they are rarely found outside the planes of earth and mineral so study is difficult indeed, normally the only reason they will travel to the prime material plane is if they are attracted to very large or pure source of some metal, particularly platinum, so, rarely, very rarely. The kargra life cycle has them hatch from a beautiful golf ball sized egg within a convection complex within the plane of earth where they grow to maturity over the course of decades, then they will group together and make their way to the quasiplane of Mineral where it seems they just eat themselves to death in absolute ecstacy, there is really no other way to explain it, they travel to their own version of heaven and perish there, transformed into bloated geodes of spectacularly rare and refined minerals that simply explode, or implode really. Unlike salmon, they are not returning to their spawning ground, its more like, they finally answer the call, having produced many new generations of their kind, they retire to their ultimate reward and final doom. Rarely an individual will break away from the school and venture for great distances and often to strange places, nobody knows why, but they tend to be the largest of their kind. Rogues I guess you could call them, I have no idea how old they can get, but they don't usually grow much larger than 4 feet long. 

All Khargra feed on high-grade ores. But like most animals, If presented with the opportunity for a rich and easy meal, they won't hesitate to exploit it. Unfortunately, this means folks venturing around wearing metal suits of armor, weapons, refined steel, alloys, pure gemstones, enchanted wondrous constructs and even coins and trade bars or ingots are just a walking buffet table to the Khargra, they have no interest in eating organic material or living creatures though, its just incidental that their feeding can cause tremendous harm to folks who don't know you can just throw coins and shields and swords and stuff at them and the Khargra will just leave them alone completely, slurping and grinding up these substances with terrifying ease. 

Inside the Khargra the metals and minerals will be ground up in its gullet catchment pockets, so a dead Khargra will always have up to 600 gold coins worth of valuable minerals inside it that is not that difficult to retrieve. In non-murder hobo terms, thats around 100 pounds or 45 kilograms of digested material, half of which will be mostly valuable nuggets of iron and other common metals, but 10% will be nuggets of silver, gold or platinum. Those who know the deep lore will harvest the fins of the Khargra as Dwarven smiths can use them in the construction of fine magical weapons, allowing them to hold a very keen and durable edge. The body scales can be used to directly fashion scaled armor and the teeth make excellent arrowheads or spear points.

Approaching Khargra do create vibrations through solid ground, beings with tremorsense, Dwarves with stonecunning and many Underdark species will be able to sense this faintly as the creatures switch direction as they suddenly sense food close by, all khargra can scent the location of ferrous metal within 30 feet of their location at all times, probably by generating their own magnetic field. The prime material plane is not as rich in minerals and they are almost always very hungry when found outside the inner planes, many will starve to death, sadly. They will fly out of the earth or solid rock and extend their claws to latch onto metallic objects and bite with their formidable maw, inflicting .. wow.. ok, 5th edition has seriously nerfed this down to a mere 1d4+1 points of piercing damage, seriously for a one foot wide maw full of sharp metallic teeth used to tear through solid stone? Are they deluded? No, no.. They can eat up to five pounds of metal per melee round, the bite does 3d6 points of piercing damage, not 1d4+1, that's ridiculous, they are flying wood chippers of armor and weapons, that's the whole point.. another error is they don't take damage from remaining inside solid earth and rock, its their native environment!

Bill, Bart, Mike, what were you smoking, stay out of the long bottom leaf when you are updating the monsters please.

The limitation of this formidable bite attack is that the Khargra is literally like a fish out of water outside of the earth, they can only move toward a target by dragging itself along with their retractable arms, and while the arms do no damage themselves, if they lash out and strike a target, they can latch on and haul the maw toward the target to take that formidable bite, so they basically have to hit you twice, but, once they latch on, they are very difficult to remove unless they have eaten all the metal on the target, or been killed, and if you do strike at them with a metal weapon, they will try to eat it. OK so just to be very clear, when they leap out of the solid earth or rock, they are out of phase, at a molecular level and it takes them a full combat round to phase into solid form in order to even make a bite attack, and they have to score a grappling hit with a retractable arm first in order to do so. If you hit them with a metal weapon they get to make a bite attack, once per round, against that weapon, and if they score a 16 or higher to hit it, they will bite a big chunk off it, only if it is metal, if it is magical, you add a point to that for every level of enchantment, so, 17 if enchanted, 18 if its a +2 weapon or armor, 19 if it is +3, artifacts and non-metallic weapons will not be eaten. Its like, try and attack me with some fried strips of delicious bacon, I dare you.

They are immune to fire, cold and poison, a heat metal spell will do full damage though and if you hit them with an old school spell like phase door or similar while they are shifting their molecular structure prior to or after phasing into solid rock or earth, they will be instantly killed and remain in a solid state, I dare say petrification would have a similar lethal effect.

The 5th edition lore also says they don't like eating gold, again, not true, 90% of their diet is iron, but 10% is made up of Platinum, gold or other, rarer metals and ores, there is no mention of copper or other specific metals and no mention of indigestion caused by gems or organic material, they just don't eat living or organic things if they can help it, much like I don't prefer to eat styrofoam.

Khargra's dark eyes can see in total darkness as well as through earth and stone, obviously they don't rely on photons to do so, they probably generate the magnetic fields somehow

Despite their very low intelligence, Khargra can speak the Terran language of elemental earth creatures and a number of azer, dwarven, and duergar clans are known to have trained khargras over the course of years for the purpose for couriering messages, having them learn the direction to underground strongholds and outposts. They accomplished this by sprinkling iron dust upon scrolls or other organic items bearing a message, than sending the khargra to the destination. Once a destination was reached, they would cough up the item-bearing message. Dragons absolutely loathe Khargra as the damn things will just eat a dragon's hoard of precious metals like a shark feeding frenzy and dragons will try to kill them on sight, much like the Dao genies.

On the Elemental Plane of Earth they were known to be hunted by chaggrin, pech, and stone giants. however, they do have their fans; Khargra are a favored by the gnome deities Callarduran Smoothhands, Flandal Steelskin, and Urdlen. They are also much loved by the earth deity Grumbar.

And there you have it my friends, the mysterious and weird little Earth Fish, bane of the armored knight, the Khargra, as always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon