Merrow largely keep to themselves, they do not live among or interact with other races except for their slaves, and very little is known about them by the people of the Bay. Encounters with merrow invariably end in conflict, as the aquatic beings are extremely territorial. Their borders are not marked in any visible way, the merrow simply expect outsiders to know and react accordingly. This means that vessels sailing out of the relative safety of the confines of the Bay risk provoking the ire of the merrow at any moment, and being blown about by a storm is all the more perilous.
Vellans, on the other hand, prove extremely docile when encountered. After generations of enslavement few, if any, consider the possibility of their lives being different. Those who are aggressive are weeded out and killed by their masters, so even when confronted by non-merrow they rarely attack. If ever they do, it will be at the urging of their masters, and they will run from combat as soon as there are no longer any merrow to force them to continue. The merrow use vellans for all the most dangerous and labour-intensive jobs, especially those that involve going onto land for long periods of time, such as mining useful ores.
Merrow Society
Most of the information in this section is unknown to the people of the Bay, even the most well studied individuals. As DM, it is at your discretion to decide what details are known to the player characters. The society of the merrow is very clearly separated along caste lines and it is almost three distinct cultures.
Warriors keep largely to themselves; strength, skill, and survival are the key factors in determining rank; the oldest are usually the highest ranking. Sometimes a warrior of lower rank might challenge a superior’s authority; the matter is settled with a duel to the death. The warriors patrol the borders of the tribe’s territory, killing first and asking questions never. They are also responsible for keeping the vellans in line, serving as guardsmen, slave drivers, and executioners when the need arises. Warriors live in communal barracks with their brethren, eating simple food and having few tangible luxuries.
In contrast, the royals live in opulence. They still live communally, but rather than in cramped barracks they live in the spacious tribal palace. Royals have fine clothing, fancy decorations and jewellery, and nearly any other indulgence you can imagine. Meals are great feasts with rich and varied dishes, often featuring the flesh of specially selected and plumped vellans or, more rarely, other races like those that live in the Bay.
The worker caste is the glue that holds the race together. They are the most numerous, and do a large part of the work that keeps their society functioning. Workers oversee and direct the efforts of the vellans; they see that sufficient food is produced; they are the bureaucrats, administrators and servants. The workers of each tribe usually live in a large town surrounding the palace of the royals, but also have other smaller communities elsewhere. The worker caste also live among the warriors, seeing to the more technical aspects of supporting armed troops. Each worker belongs to a brood, a large group of workers hatched from eggs laid at the same time; the brood is like their family, and each brood usually takes on a specific task with all its members working to the fulfilment of that goal. Some workers take it upon themselves to learn magic that might be beneficial to the tribe and so are found among the warriors serving as healers and artillery.
Each tribe has a Queen, one female royal who rules over the tribe and is never questioned. The Queen is larger than the rest of the female royals, her torso is roughly the same but her tail swells up until it is nearly 6 times the size of her torso. She rarely moves from her throne; the royals have all their feasts there in the throne room to accommodate her presence. Whenever a tribe’s Queen dies, her corpse releases a chemical into the waters of the palace that causes the other females to become engorged as they produce a single extremely large egg. Whichever female lays her egg first is selected as the new Queen. She then devours the egg and promptly falls into a coma as her body transforms into that of a Queen, a process that takes roughly a month. Once the transformation is complete, she awakens and begins producing and laying eggs at an increased rate. The new Queen rules until she dies, when the process begins again. Occasionally females take this opportunity to begin their own tribe, in which case they travel to a new territory with at least one male and devour their egg to begin the transformation; members of that Queen’s original tribe are generally hostile toward the new tribe, seeing them as traitors.
Using Merrow and Vellans in Play
To use merrow and vellans as opponents in your D&D game there are a number of options. For vellans, you can use the same sort of monsters as you might use to represent varkers, simply add a swim speed and give them the aquatic keyword. Merrow are a more complicated matter; your players should rarely ever have to face royals, but warriors and workers would appear in combat. You can use such creatures as sahuagin, craud, or even chuuls to represent these castes, but given the scant nature of available stand-ins, I plan to post a number of example monsters in the future. These will give you a better idea of how they operate in combat and serve as a starting point for you to design or modify your own.
Monday: The Human Race
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