Carnifex
First Post
A new addition to the array of ideas I'm working on, the nautilith and their main city. As I'm sure you can tell, they were inspired by basically mixing illithids with octopi. I'll be adding a monster description of them to the thread when I get it done.
"Fear them; but fear them not for the perils they present to your physical form. Fear them because they put your very mind and soul in danger."
- Shulurak Shankau, sahuagin bishop of the Shark.
The nautilith are one of the greatest dangers beneath the waves, horrific in appearance to most other water dwellers. Sages speculate they may have some common ancestry with the 'mind flayers' of other worlds; but the nautilith are highly adapted to the watery seascapes of the place that most planar travellers jokily refer to as 'Shark World'. A nautilith has a head that sprouts a twitching array of tentacles, eight in place of the four that a mind flayer sports, which usually are left drooping to sense the stirring of currents in the water. Sinuous, malleable forms that have no true bones in their bodies, nautilith are roughly humanoid but are able to squeeze their rubbery, clammy bodies through the tiniest gaps as if they were filled with water themselves; about the only thing that puts a limit on this is the horny plates of natural armour on some parts of their bodies such as protecting the lengthy brain-case.
Nautilith usually do not wear much in the way of clothing, since their skin has a natural chameleonic ability to change colour and match their surroundings; in fact, nautilith are master hunters of the ocean floors, lying in wait while their deformed bodies take on the appearance of debris or seaweed. They are excellent swimmers, using natural organs that suck water in and jet it out along their flanks to propel themselves through the water.
The greatest city of the nautilith is commonly referred to as Hadrash; they have their own name for it that beings of other races simply cannot pronounce. It is a huge place of strange and alien architecture, even to those under the sea, and it is perched on the very edge of a huge abyss. Nautilith legend states that Hadrash is where the Kraken first created their peoples, and the city is the site of a massive temple to the Kraken called the Cathedral of the Bottomless Deep. Hadrash is a center of the slave trade, non-nautilith often travelling there to buy and sell under the watchful eyes of the octopus-men who ensure that the process can carry on undisrupted. A floating settlement of lashed-together boats and rafts has grown up over Hadrash to provide surfacer slavers with somewhere to stay, secured to the sea floor by huge metal chains and with special glass globes allowing traders to descend to the city below.
Nautilith tolerate outsiders within the city as long as they have a valid reason - usually to take part in the slave trade. Others come to peruse the huge libraries that the nautilith have gathered and which reputedly hold ancient magics and knowledge from before the Fall of the meteors, but they are usually turned away or just eaten for being spies. The current ruler, the Lord of Hadrash (LE male nautilith Wiz 12) is taking advantage of the threats to the slave trade posed by organisations such as the Courts of Justice to attract more business his way, presenting his city as the only place to safely do business; his agents are seeking to gain an iron grip on the slave trade throughout all the seas of the world. The agressive expansionist policies of the nautilith ruler have also led to his hiring many mercenaries to bolster the slave-fodder for the current war with the sea-elves of Kamadrith.
The abyss which Hadrash lies on the edge of is a truly huge gash in the seascape, a great rift probably created when the meteors fell to earth. What lies within is unknown, but even the nautilith fear to venture within it and upon occasion dark things come crawling out, seeking warm blood to snatch away.
"Fear them; but fear them not for the perils they present to your physical form. Fear them because they put your very mind and soul in danger."
- Shulurak Shankau, sahuagin bishop of the Shark.
The nautilith are one of the greatest dangers beneath the waves, horrific in appearance to most other water dwellers. Sages speculate they may have some common ancestry with the 'mind flayers' of other worlds; but the nautilith are highly adapted to the watery seascapes of the place that most planar travellers jokily refer to as 'Shark World'. A nautilith has a head that sprouts a twitching array of tentacles, eight in place of the four that a mind flayer sports, which usually are left drooping to sense the stirring of currents in the water. Sinuous, malleable forms that have no true bones in their bodies, nautilith are roughly humanoid but are able to squeeze their rubbery, clammy bodies through the tiniest gaps as if they were filled with water themselves; about the only thing that puts a limit on this is the horny plates of natural armour on some parts of their bodies such as protecting the lengthy brain-case.
Nautilith usually do not wear much in the way of clothing, since their skin has a natural chameleonic ability to change colour and match their surroundings; in fact, nautilith are master hunters of the ocean floors, lying in wait while their deformed bodies take on the appearance of debris or seaweed. They are excellent swimmers, using natural organs that suck water in and jet it out along their flanks to propel themselves through the water.
The greatest city of the nautilith is commonly referred to as Hadrash; they have their own name for it that beings of other races simply cannot pronounce. It is a huge place of strange and alien architecture, even to those under the sea, and it is perched on the very edge of a huge abyss. Nautilith legend states that Hadrash is where the Kraken first created their peoples, and the city is the site of a massive temple to the Kraken called the Cathedral of the Bottomless Deep. Hadrash is a center of the slave trade, non-nautilith often travelling there to buy and sell under the watchful eyes of the octopus-men who ensure that the process can carry on undisrupted. A floating settlement of lashed-together boats and rafts has grown up over Hadrash to provide surfacer slavers with somewhere to stay, secured to the sea floor by huge metal chains and with special glass globes allowing traders to descend to the city below.
Nautilith tolerate outsiders within the city as long as they have a valid reason - usually to take part in the slave trade. Others come to peruse the huge libraries that the nautilith have gathered and which reputedly hold ancient magics and knowledge from before the Fall of the meteors, but they are usually turned away or just eaten for being spies. The current ruler, the Lord of Hadrash (LE male nautilith Wiz 12) is taking advantage of the threats to the slave trade posed by organisations such as the Courts of Justice to attract more business his way, presenting his city as the only place to safely do business; his agents are seeking to gain an iron grip on the slave trade throughout all the seas of the world. The agressive expansionist policies of the nautilith ruler have also led to his hiring many mercenaries to bolster the slave-fodder for the current war with the sea-elves of Kamadrith.
The abyss which Hadrash lies on the edge of is a truly huge gash in the seascape, a great rift probably created when the meteors fell to earth. What lies within is unknown, but even the nautilith fear to venture within it and upon occasion dark things come crawling out, seeking warm blood to snatch away.
