What Hangs Out With Formians?

[Yuan-Ti]

Can Formians have wizards? How about a Necromancer in the colony... instant undead!

Otherwise, I think there are some great ideas here with flying formians and some other variants. The flying formians, however, would be most useful outside the nest. A big cavern would work, as well, but wouldn't really be in keeping with the ant-flavor.

 

[Tar Markvar]

Well, the whole idea of the colony is that some decades ago, a starship landed here carrying a group of escaping rebels against the Dragon Empire. They were carrying an artifact of great power. The rebels were found by a small cabal of wizards called the Society of the Horizons and were taken in and hidden by the Temple of Fharlanghn (spacefarers ARE travelers, after all, and in Kalamar, Fharlanghn becomes the god of the stars, as well), and they were cared for until they all died, years later. The wreckage was never found.

Of course, formians, drawn by the order that technology represents, long since colonized the crater where the wreckage landed. They've built up the earth around it so that surface dwellers can't find it, and they've repaired it and studied it to further their own technology. The colony is an outpost of a formian hive some 50 miles away (to keep the queen out of this... the party could hardly handle a CR 18 queen and her attendants), and its purpose was originally to study the wreckage, but it's since become a working colony of its own, in the way formians tend to build and structure things. They have enslaved people from the nearby town of Fopsido (sp?), including a young bard the PCs will hear telling the tale of their adventures in the stars when they reach the town.

The town nearest the crater is in the swamp, so swamp creatures are possible. I figure some phase spiders would be lovely, as would ankhegs and a black pudding or two. To be truthful, it seems like the formians would eradicate anything they saw as a threat in their home, so anything nasty would either be aligned with them or brand new to the colony. That's where I run into problems finding non-formian threats.

 

[Bonedagger]

How about having a powerfull creature of some kind that has been researching the formians in hiding. Now he's afraid the PCs will harm his little precious ones (The formians).

It could be a mad wizard (Or scientist. Don't know much about the Dragonstar setting) or maybe a devil trying to find alternative ways to create minions in his experiments (Kinda like formian clones). He could also start summoning creatures to kill or weaken the PCs (So the formians would have an easier time with them ). Or maybe attack directly?

...Or maybe it could be an organisation in hiding trying to find a way to control the formians for their own dark purposes (Remember Alien). The formians might even know they are there but just be ignoring them for now... So the organisation would be in for a surprise.

Just an idea.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For the range of the Hive Mind: Ignore it.
You could explain it by adapted biotechnology/Spellware or something like that...

Oh, and I remember something (actually I didn`t fully, and had to finde the scene on DVD):
"We are the Fomorian.
Lower your weapons and surrender your party.
We will add your biological distinctivness to our own.
Your party will adapt to serve us.
Resistance is futile"

So far to the ship design

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Voneth]

*gets mental image of old school dungeon crawls where beholders and harpies hang out together*

shudder

Just some quick ideas:

Depending on how subtle you want to make the Formorians, you could have some Areana (the spider people) as shapechanging spies. You campaign's NPC's that have been helpful to the group lately are actualy on the Formorian's side. They'll wonder what's going on when their "best friends" in the game are now setting up road blocks to the colony site and then comes the moment of truth when they switch to their spider forms. The really cool thing about the Areana is that they are built to be masked from a lot of different detection spells until the mage is high level.

But personaly, I think you are working too hard. If you want to develop a whole load of new castes, then just go through the Monster Manual. When you find a monster you think fits the bill, then design a descripton of a Formorain "version" of the monster and then you have a whole new monster. This trick works even better if you write down the stats like you would for a homebrew critter, most players will never know the difference. (yeah, saying that the party meets a huge Formorian and then opening your MM to the Troll entry is a dead give away.)

Another way to think on the subject would be to come up with "insect" versions of the Special Abilites. Fear from demons could be fear from the alien appearance of strange Formorian breeds. Dragons could be Gargantuan Queen Fire Beetles that rule entire continets of colonies. Unless you want to have some visual variety to the monsters you party faces, ("Oh! great! more of Tar Markvar's twisted Formorian creations, What is going to throw at us this time.") then really you have all the Formorians you need staring at you from each and every entry of the MM.

 

[Tar Markvar]

That's not a bad idea. I know I can have other MM creatures there as slaves of the formians. A new caste or two wouldn't hurt anyone (like a legionnaire caste between warriors and myrmarchs, for example, or a caste built up specifically to handle high-tech weapons or maintain high-tech equipment).

I definitely don't want anyone controlling the formians save the queen. Not sure why, but I think it's nice to have something be simple for a change, without webs of intrigue mucking things up too much. There's enough of that in the Dragonstar galaxy that I have planned... for example, the half-dragon son of that black dragon the PCs killed a few weeks back might just come to Tellene looking for payback, and he'll have an entire backwater world to play with, while the PCs are just now about to get their own ship (which is the point of the formian adventure, after all).

Oh, for those who don't know, Dragonstar is essentially D&D in space. All the D&D classes are there, including the mages and clerics. Basically, science and technology do what they can (machines, powerful weapons, great armor, etc.) and magic does the rest (faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity, etc.). Just in case that helps anyone spawn ideas. In this case, imagine formians with blaster weapons, grenades, and the like.

 

[Grim]

How about thri-kreen? They are basically mantis men with 4 arms, 2 legs, and mandibles. You can find them in the web supliment for the psionics handbook. if you dont have the psionics handbook, just replace thier powers with spells, a la the mindflayer (written before the book came out and using spells)

 

[Romotre]

put some slaad hiding in there or something. i love pitting the two against each other...

 

[Voneth]

That's not a bad idea. I know I can have other MM creatures there as slaves of the formians. A new caste or two wouldn't hurt anyone (like a legionnaire caste between warriors and myrmarchs, for example, or a caste built up specifically to handle high-tech weapons or maintain high-tech equipment).

Thanks

ust in case that helps anyone spawn ideas. In this case, imagine formians with blaster weapons, grenades, and the like.

*theme of the Empire*
da-di-da-di-da-di-daaa-da-da-da-didit-daa-daa-didit-daa-daa-didit-daa-daa-da-di-da-di-da-di-da

Come to think of it, the Formorians would make better shocktroopers than the Drow in DragonStar (my only real pet peeve about the setting -- then again, I want the Gyth to be the true Secret Service for Dragon Star)

 

[Gez]

Just reading along...

I've seen several time "formorian" or "fomorian". Please. It's formian, F-O-R-M-I-A-N (as in formica, ant).

Formorian are something completely different. According to celt myths, they were misshapen evil giants led by Balor of the Evil Eye, whose gaze could kill someone instantly. They were vanquished and driven out of Eire by the Tuatha de Danaan, a large group of powerful heroes.



To give more on-topic insight, axiomatic giant vermin (ants and wasps) is a good idea. Axiomatic ankheg would be fun. Enslaved Thri-Kreen or axiomatic ones would also be quite tough.

If you have the MotP, you could also give them some inevitable. If you download the appropriate MotP web-enhancement, you could maybe give the formians a squad of Modrons helping them for whatever reason they can have (the Modrons' schemes are hard to predict).

Xill mercenary, and devil "advisors" could be interesting as well, indeed.

It's probably better to avoid using all ideas at the same time; the resulting faction would be too chaotic for the formian's taste.

I know they use slaves; but as I see the formians, I see them using only slaves from a limited set of variety in each colony. This way, they reduce the number of particularities in a colony, and of special quarters for slaves.

If you have halfling slaves, you can make small quarters for them, with a low ceiling and little beds. If you get an ogre slave; there's no way you can make him enter the slave quarter. Inversely, it would be a waste of space to build slave quarters that can accept any kind of slaves; most of time the roof will be too high and you could have put additional floors instead of that big empty room that furthermore needs to much calories to be heated properly.

Similarly, you can't have frost giant and salamander slaves in the same quarter.

Another reason is that sometimes racial hatred are so strong that mind-control fails for a short time; and you have the orc slave who begin to slash through elf slaves and kill them until the taskmaster reaffermish control.

When they capture slaves of inappropriate type, they would exchange them with another colony. Maybe you could have the players see such an exchange from a distance.