The
Morkoth is one of those monsters that the game likes to jump dump in your lap, and leave you to try and decide what to do with it. There is some really interesting elements here, but it certainly isn’t what you might expect to see.
The art for the Morkoth in Volo’s is probably the worst in the entire volume. This is because the central role of this art is to provide a clear and understandable image of what the monster in question is; and this art gives the impression that the Morkoth is a garguantuan creature which swims around with loads of treasure on its head. Yet the stat block indicates that a Morkoth is actually a human-sized creature that lives in a cave at the centre of a magical floating island. A real disappointment.
While googling for the above image - which is one of the real pleasures of this series, since I get to find all kinds of weird and wonderful images in the process - I learned that the Morkoth used to be
very different in previous editions. Regardless, I’d never heard of them before, so who cares!
The Morkoths are a really gratifyingly weird lot, and I’m actually quite a fan of them, though I wish that they were more powerful. They came about from essentially a divine hearse pileup in the Astral plane, and each one is a creature that lives on an island made from the energies or material that resulted from that collision. I don’t think that the Morkoth would leave its island very often, but the text is vague on the matter. These islands are under the sway of the Morkoth, so far as climate and layout are concerned. In other words, it is like a permanent
demiplane with no walls. The more interesting part, though, is that these islands wander the cosmos - popping from plane to plane in a pattern perhaps regular, perhaps not, and which may or may not be under the Morkoth’s control. This is super interesting! For a start, it gives you another way to let the players navigate their way to the planes, and still keeping it under the DMs control. In addition, it makes the Morkoth and its island a wandering plot hook, something that could have appeared suddenly right in the midst of all kinds of important events.
The next element that makes the Morkoth useful for a storyline is that they are collectors. I’ve already made use of one in this regard in my home game, with the players needing to find something that it wants in order to exchange it for something that it already has. Anyone who has seen
Guardians of the Galaxy knows how interesting a collector of oddities can be, and these guys are very odd indeed. All kinds of macguffins, keys to long-lost dungeons, holy relics, and mummified remains of legendary kings can be justifiably located in the Morkoth’s collection, and that will give your players an impetus to seek out the wandering island To be honest, this is also likely itself to be an interesting plot hook, as the players could have to seek out the ancient tomes that list the arrival times of the island according to the ancient lunar calendar, for example. From a story perspective, the Morkoths really combine the best bits of the Planescape portal system with the ‘mad but potentially helpful wizard’ trope.
In a game like D&D, you can never really rule out combat. Plus, to be honest, the Morkoth is likely to be such an arse to your players that they
want to kill it! So let’s take a look at its stats. At CR 12 in its Lair - and I’m not sure why you’d use one outside of its magical island - the Morkoth is a bit too weak for my tastes, but I suspect that they wanted the Morkoth to not be something that could overpower the typical (level 5-10) group of adventurers by itself, but instead something that had to hide away and plot against them. They are amazingly perceptive for their CR - Passive Perception 20, Blindsight 30ft! - and comes with Wizard spells as for an 11th level character, with a decent mixture of the nasty (
Lightning Bolt,
Chain Lighting), plot useful (
geas,
sending) and characterful (
Evard’s black tentacles). It also has some melee attacks, which are fairly weak and follow the ‘on a hit you are grappled’ methodology that we’ve seen a lot. Another interesting option is the
Hypnosis ability, which is essentially a Dragon Fright aura in reverse, drawing people closer to it, but with its fairly low HP that might be a mistake on the Morkoth’s part. I think that the Morkoth does suffer from having a combination of fairly weak spellcasting and fairly weak melee attacks, meaning that either way it is likely to underwhelm. Much more exciting, however, is the
Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it bounce effects onto other people if it passes a save. This is actually really nasty - it would let a Morkoth pass for no damage, and deal the full damage of the spell to someone else, for example - and probably the reason for the relatively low damage output that it itself has.
I have a bad habit of not mentioning the Lair Actions for these creatures. Thus you might expect me to fail in this regard once more.
The Morkoth has only two Lair actions, but they are both pretty interesting. The first is to toss a
Hypnosis up to 120 ft away, not requiring Line of Sight. This seems like a hilarious way to mess with a party trying to peer around the door or kite it. Alternatively, it can cast - without using a spell slot -
Darkness,
Dispel Magic or
Misty Step. Those three are actually pretty interesting on a slow creature with blindsense and strong magical abilities, so I think that it would definitely make a difference to a fight. I don’t know if I’d say that these Lair Actions make the Morkoth worth CR 12 rather than 11, but I do think that they’ll make it a much more engaging magical opponent.
To finish this pretty long entry: these guys are great. They have a strong combination of really interesting plot hooks, a great way of bringing in planar travel without losing control of the plot, and a combat presence that will cause wonderful problems for your party’s spellcasters, makes these guys well worth using. They’re a one tentacled monstrosity plot hook, and they can do all kinds of fun things for your campaign.
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