We once again meet one of the Fey, as the
Korred hooves it into view, his oddly powerful hair swishing around him. I kind of love these guys, but dang they are
weird.
The image in Volo’s is very subdued in its palette, which is the most striking thing about it. I like the enigmatic, alien expression on the Korred’s face, and the rather strange proportions, but I’m not sure about the hair, which looks a lot like electrical wiring.
The Korred are a strange bunch. From the flavour text, we learn that they come in tribes, who like to do ceremonial dances, and which live in ‘the depths of the Material Plane’, which apparently means underground. They are also sought after by the Dwarves and others who seek wealth underground. So we get another Fey, but one that seems to live in the place where all the other Fey don’t. Interesting. Fey culture is apparently very dispersed! The Korred have a strong connection with the earth, including the ability to summon various elementals and a burrowing speed, and this connection is most interestingly expressed in how their stats change when standing on it. The flavour text also tells us two other things: that Korreds can sense anything vaguely related to stone, meaning that they can fine gems easily and secret doors made of stone are totally transparent to them, and that their hair is magical and conforms to the material used to cut it.
The ability to sense secret doors is something that I think we can work with. Imagine that the players in your game are totally stumped by a dungeon - they just cannot find the way to the treasure vault! So they leave dispirited, only to learn of a Korred that can unerringly find the door. Or perhaps one could become the bane of the banks in a city, wriggling its way into all of their treasure vault, and the players are tasked with working out what is going on. Meanwhile, the magical hair is used to justify an interestingly weird ability, and also has some story potential, as illustrated by Volo’s comment on a merchant using shears of gold. So far I’ve not mentioned the post-it notes from Elminister and Volo, since I’ve not been that impressed with them; however, I must say that I found Volo’s comment on the Korred great, if only for the phrase “from the swallow to the sitter”. I’ll have to remember that one for a combat description! I think that the Korred’s magical hair is the kind of thing that will reward a creative imagination, especially if you are keen on visually interesting descriptions: the Korred could sneak up on a player and try to strangle them in their sleep with a hair made from glass, all horrible sharp angles and whatnot.
The Korred gets a surprisingly powerful statblock, and rather unusually is more potent with its ranged attacks than in melee. There are very few ‘ranged’ monsters in the game; I can only think of Yuan-Ti Malisons as another example at the moment, but I have had a lot to drink at the time of writing. Anyway, the Korred gets a few solid tricks. It can toss rocks or swing a greatclub, both of which get a substantial damage boost when it is touching the ground. I like this, firstly because it reminds me of how Herakles once won a fight by lifting his opponent off of the ground, after being told that he was invulnerable while touching it; also, it means that the
Telekinesis spell might get some solid results for being used by clever players. As I’ve mentioned, the rocks are the stronger of the two, which suits the ability of the Korred to summon elemental creatures to be the frontline for it. They also get some non-combat spells to suit their stone theme, but one odd choice in the spell list is
Otto’s Irresistable Dance, which is an amazingly powerful 6th level spell, giving
no save against a save-or-suck effect. Very nasty to do that with one Korred, while another one (or its summoned Galeb Duhr) takes advantage.
Finally, we get the
Command Hair ability, which is a Bonus Action for the Korred; it lets them restrain (not grapple, the weaker of the two) targets nearby, again allowing them to attack the victim more easily. The hair regains hit points while the Korred is alive, which is cute; I like how you can directly attack the hair, since doing that is a nice cinematic moment for someone. The
Command Hair being a Bonus is really good, I think, since it gives the Korred a solid set of actions for its turn that will enable it to work as a potent ranged attacker, shutting down attempts to close into melee.
The Korred is a really interesting creature, and I do hope that a future book demonstrates their culture or an NPC version of one, since I think that they have a lot of potential. The combat abilities are strong and very cool, which combines with the story potential to make the Korred well worth using in your game.
