What are some of the absolute worst things you can imagine an Aboleth doing? I've heard they can be pretty nightmarish, but the basic descriptions I've come across lack the punch I was expecting.
What other creepy body horror inflicting monsters have you used/come across in your campaigns?
I actually plan on using one in my upcoming campaign. It's going to be sitting motionless in a dark chamber, while it mindcontrols an entire nation.
Also, they are known in some editions to trap humanoid races underground with them until they mentally snap and become feral frog people.
Sex in the missionary position with the lights off while holding hands
>>46855063
>I've heard they can be pretty nightmarish, but the basic descriptions I've come across lack the punch I was expecting.
Robbing you of your free will while altering your skin to be transparent and slimy so that you're trapped even if you escape is basic?
>>46855127
Puppeteering an entire country is pretty intense.
>>46855158
Nothing is so morally bankrupt as that. What's next, hand holding?
>>46855209
Yeah, I was expecting a little more flair than mind control => fishman.
Maybe it's just the way it was described making the process seem less horrific. It isn't that being robbed of your mental and physical identity isn't really really bad. I think I just need to find more specific stories to really get a feel for the personal toll.
>>46855354
That guy has a vagina for a neck that I'm 100% sure the artist put in for no reason other than shits and giggles.
>>46855063
A sudoku.
>>46855063
One of the first boxed D&D campaigns is called Night Below.It's about what happens when the Aboleth basically turn the entire Underdark into nazi Germany. They proceed to mentally dominate various groups and species and send them into the rest of the world as raiding parties, with magical potions that let the Aboleth dominate even MORE people by proxy. They then have these distantly removed proxies abduct as many people as possible all over the world, strip them of their valuables, and ship them en-masse to the Sunless Sea. Non-magical people become slave labor and/or mindflayer food. Magic users are all ritually sacrificed to an artifact the aboleth are building called the Tower of Domination - which is actually FIVE towers. When complete, the tower will broadcast aboleth domination to the entire world.
And all of this is regarded by the aboleth in roughly the same way that you or I would think about a person with a hobby farm. Most of them don't even give a shit.
Raiding villages using weapons specifically designed to inject or spray the victim with aboleth slime, making them unable to breath air and turning their skin gelatinous. In fact, wouldn't an aboleth make mad cash by selling mucus and slime to warring nations as a medieval mustard gas?
I've never come across an Aboleth, what're they about?
>>46855158
>>46855234
>handholding and missionary
This tired old meme needs to die. It hasn't been funny for years.
>>46855876
Specifically to fuck over martials. Basically everything in the monster manual is geared towards killing martials, with few exceptions for magic resistant creatures.
>>46855891
You don't think bestiality is disgusting and terrifying?
>>46855891
Anon didn't say consensual.
>>46855234
Damn, I like this art. Nice discerning alien look while also looking a bit too much like a primitive deep sea creature, which I'm slightly uncomfortable ascribing advanced intelligence and ambition to. Aboleth designs in general are good, but a bit too easy to become comfortable with.
>>46855922
Fairly certain abominations don't count as beasts.
>>46855158
this is a blue board, anon
>>46855063
The aboleths in my campaign are going to be major villains, and a missing Paladin NPC that's an important part of the paladin's backstory was captured by them as a test subject. Paladins, with their immunity to disease and divine grace, plus all their auras, are a uniquely tough nut for the Aboleths to crack.
So they drowned and revived the paladin, over and over and over, to see if they could crack the Aura of Courage and induce a fear response to water. When that failed, they started alternating between taking away the paladin's ability to breathe air and infecting them with slime to torture them by keeping them in an air-filled room to suffocate and dry out before being revived again and the previous drown-and-revive torture.
This was mostly to test the limits of the air-breather's strongest defenders, however, as they were also bio-engineering a plague that paralyzes the lungs of creatures that can't breathe water. I'm curious how the players are going to react when they reach some NPC villages that just have everyone in them dead without a mark on them and no trace of magic.
>>46855913
But what do they do and why?
>>46855764
These guys don't do anything halfway, do they?
>>46856032
Most of them are indolent hedonists that are focused on byzantine internal political scheming with a planning horizon of somewhere between several thousand and several billion years. They have a type of serial immortality and can reasonably expect to see their schemes to fruition.
Basically picture a nation populated by ten-billion-year old psionic aquatic invertebrates of genius level intelligence. As a society they are tentacles-deep into hyperspecialization in a way that isn't really comprehensible.
>>46856032
Similar to the mind flayers and beholders, they believe that their kind is best kind and that all others are untermensch that must be destroyed. They infect loathsome air breathers with slime stuff that makes them aquatic and then mindslave them to do their bidding
>>46856456
>they believe that their kind is best kind and that all others are untermensch that must be destroyed.
What makes the aboleth scary is that they might be right.
>>46856449
How many are there?
>>46856456
Why do almost all intelligent abominations have the same motivation? Seems lazy.
>>46856509
To be fair, with the Aboleths part of the reason they consider themselves the perfect species is they believe they were doing just fine as the first form of sentient life before the gods showed up and ruined everything. The other abominations are just really vain.
>>46856535
So they consider themselves perfect because they had no competition back when there was nothing to compete with them?
>>46856592
Yeah, basically. They had their kickass empire of basically immortal geniuses and the planet to themselves. They were living the good life.
Then gods showed up and ruined property values everywhere by making more sentient life.
On some levels they have their whole "there is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it," while on others it's just "MOW MY LAWN OR GET THE FUCK OFF IT!"
>>46856509
>How many are there?
They're not as numerous as humans or orcs, but there are a lot of them.
Picture an underground sea roughly the size of the Mediterranean, then drop in a city the size of, say, London.
>>46856592
Arguably, there is still nothing to compete with them.
>>46856656
>Arguably, there is still nothing to compete with them.
So it's a case of no single group or faction being a threat, butof not desiring to try to conquer them all one by one in a lengthy us against the world war?
>>46856509
The thing is, in many settings back before there was anything else, there were the abberations who fought huge fucking wars against eachother, so they see eachother as only worthy of extermination. Then the gods showed up and made all these fucking bullshit creatures and locked the abbies underground. So a lot of it is being pissed at these fucking upstarts who haven't progressed to a decent tech level
>>46855764
>aboleth's campaign
>mindflayer food
Doesn't those guys supposed to hate each other?
>>46857344
Depends on setting and edition I think. Regardless, Mind Flayers would probably be one of the few groups Aboleths might consider worthy allying with.
But then part of the premise of this is that the Aboleths conquered every other Underdark race through mental domination, which would include the Mind Flayers.
>>46855063
>but the basic descriptions I've come across lack the punch I was expecting.
>aboleth
>punch
At last, I can post this.
>>46856509
Because they are eldritch and immoral. And amoral in here means "completely rational".And from their position of "absolute rationality" they understand that is only right way to go. There're may be only one sapient species,one culture(if aboleth had one),one lord of the multiverse everything else is just resource for their needs or a threat. If there slight possibility of danger it must be exterminated.
>>46857395
Considering that Mind Flayers are psionics,can into actual science and are basically big brains suckboats ,can't they develop some sort of mind block. Or dominate aboleth?I just love how google translate automatically translates mind flayer as illithid
>>46857704
Because that's their name. Mind Flayer doesn't even make sense. They don't flay minds.
>>46855063
>What are some of the absolute worst things you can imagine an Aboleth doing?
Changing the subject of every conversation to drag queens.
Standing in front of the PCs at the cash register and starting an argument with the employee.
Taking human form and crashing one of those little bicycles with no brakes into the PCs getaway car, causing them to get arrested.
Dog form: Eat all documents in the PCs house. Take a crap on the keyboard, just because.
>>46857704
ilithids are to aboleth as lizardmen are to dragons.
>>46858031
Mind flayer is CR 8 while Aboleth is CR 7. Granted, in actual fight an aboleth is likely slightly more dangerous, CR being the crapshoot it is in 3.5, but your comparison is absurd.
>>46858428
I think the point he was making is, where Illithids are concerned, its often a nubers game while a single Aboleth can be a BBEG
>>46859037
I don't see what that has to do with the post he was replying to.
Aboleth vs Elder Brain
Who wins?
>>46859564
Elder brain, and it's not even a competition.
Where did the fluff come from that the Ilithids distrust the Aboleths because they're older than time, and the Aboleths distrust the Ilithids because they can't remember where they came from, and they can remember literally everything?
>>46859749
It was in the Lords of Madness 3.5 book.
One of the best 3.5 books ever made.
Illithids are one of the only things that Aboleths worry about because they aren't included in the Aboleth's inborn ancient memory. They have no idea where they came from, and they can remember where everything came from. Illithids are actually a species that originates potentially billions of years in the future. They encountered a time-ending event and so to save their glorious empire, they sent some of them back in time to conquer the universe all over again.
>>46859829
Isn't it also implied that Illithids are what humans evolved into?
>>46855063
Kidnap some random villagers, or hire adventurers to do it for you. Hold the village for absurd ransom: "if you pay, we'll kill them, and if you don't pay, we'll release them."
First village obviously doesn't pay.
Villagers are released, show up in village all shaven bald, upper skull removed, regular skin removed from head and replaced with translucent slimy membrane. Conversation confirms that they're definitely the same people, if slightly worse for the wear, just utterly fucked by the fact that their brains will start shearing loose if they so much as tilt their heads. Custom fitted helmets turn out not very effective at replacing skulls. Attrition rate is high, death is painful and involves insanity and brain damage.
Kidnappers strike again. Same message: "if you pay, we'll kill them, and if you don't pay, we'll release them."
Next set of released villagers to a village that didn't pay up has had their heads entirely removed. (The brain, unbeknownst to Healing 0 villagers, has been transplanted into the abdomen.) Instead, four aboleth-like tentacles dripping corrosive slime sprout from the stump around a tiny mouth. The tentacle-headed victims can talk and echolocate and function reasonably well, but have been selectively brain damaged, rendered unable to comprehend their own condition. They think they're still normal humans and wonder why their former friends hate and fear them so much. If you try to explain "you got your head chopped off", they respond "don't be ridiculous, that would make me dead, but I'm standing right here talking to you, aren't I?"
People start paying to have their own kin killed by monsters. Anyone who pays gets the bodies delivered intact for burial.
(Later, if possible, the aboleth research group behind this will start kidnapping a second generation from the same villages and investigate the effects of resulting trauma.)
>>46860121
Reminds me of that Robbin Hobb series
>>46860002
Yes. It is implied but not explicitly stated.
>>46855354
Frankly, inducing body horror is more of an illithid thing.
They like to get all Josef Mengele on their slaves.
an aboleth once forced a drow matron to fall in love with my PC for laughs.
29 men dead over a love note.
>>46857344
Aboleths have eidetic ancestral memory, so they basically know everything.
As far as Aboleths are concerned, the Mindflayers just showed up overnight with a complete civilization.
They don't know that Mindflayers time traveled from the future. So Aboleths think Mindflayers are p spooky.
But aside from their long term plans not involving eachother existing, they aren't inherently hostile.
>>46859108
Roll a spot check!
Rolled 15 + 286 (1d20 + 286)
>>46861520
I SEE EVERYTHING
>>46861643
Except inwards.
>>46859108
Why does everybody think angels are people with fluffy bird wings anyway?
>>46861954
Because there are 9 types of angels. Fluffy bird wing angels are the form one type of angel chooses to take.
The others are more esoteric.
>>46861643
Missed a spot
>>46862120
Many are described as such. Some are described as just really good looking men with no wings or anything.
>>46861954
>>46862394
I think the wings and haloes come from medieval artwork, where they were used symbolically to show the holiness of the angels. In the Bible, when they don't appear in an utterly inhuman form, angels aren't immediately distinquishable from humans.
>>46862394
>>46862802
I don't know if any of you have seen an undisguised angel, but trust me. They are horrifying.
>>46863675
Prime example here.
>>46855063
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Below
One day, I'm going to run this for 5E.
>>46863675
Tell us more, anon. I know that one of the guys at my church was a drug-addicted drug dealer who went straight and wound up converting after he started seeing angels and demons everywhere (even when he was sober). IIRC he said the angels he saw looked like little people peeping at him from around corners, with eyes made out of light.
>>46857704
Aboleths are on a whole different scale from illithids. Maybe in a few thousand years once the Mind Flayers have their civilization properly up and running again.
Individual aboleths may not be quite as strong as individual mind flayers, but there's way more aboleths, and they're all way, way, *way* older.
Plus their society isn't innately based on the lie the way Mind Flayer society is.
>>46863775
>>46862802
>The others are more esoteric.
All of them are.
The Cherubim are specifically called out as the only angels that are actually living things.
>>46862802
Halos were originally used in art to show regency of kings, most notably the Roman emperors.
They became religious iconography later on.
>>46861880
That's pretty deep, anon.
>>46855891
Yes it is, you just have poor taste.
Used this as an NPC in my Shadows of the Demon Lord game.This living mannequin, named Charity, had the same goal of Pinocchio, but decided to become a real girl in a very different way.
>>46855063
I thought they could psychically cause you to grow/lose limbs and organs just by being in close proximity.
>>46864006
>Throne
>not Thrones
>not Ophanim
>Throne
This sorta grinds my gears.
>>46855947
Exactly. What else would you need handholding for?
>>46865492Going steady.
>>46863942
/x/ here. The dude probably got dissociated enough to start seeing elementals. Or he fried his brain. Either one is likely.
>>46855063
>What are some of the absolute worst things you can imagine an Aboleth doing?
Intentionally letting you run away while keeping a telepathic link in your head, then talking with you as you begin to suffocate due to only breathing water and as your flesh begins to slowly dissolve off.
This thread could use some more body horror art and anecdotes.
Lets fail some SAN checks, /tg/.
>>46858428
5e puts Aboleths at CR 10 (and I don't see a modifier for lair bonuses anywhere), while Mind Flayers are reduced to CR 7.mind flayers are fuckin scary though
>>46866704
Or he started to self-medicate on drugs because he had schizo tendencies which developed into visual hallucinations when he stopped.
>>46864369
I don't want to devalue anyone's perception of me so let's go with that.
>>46861643
But can you see why kids love the great taste of cinnamon toast crunch?
>>46855158
That kid is so cute.
>>46856656
>Arguably, there is still nothing to compete with them.
Umm Krakens and Aquatic dragons regularly kick the shit out of them...
They arent the only things at the top anymore hence why theyre pissed.
>>46875430
>just your average everyday Aboleth going for a stroll through my undersea neighborhood
>doodee doodee dooo
>awww shit its a kraken
>actcoolactcoolactcool
"Yo! Abo! Gimme yo money!"
>damn it!
>>46855063
>What are some of the absolute worst things you can imagine an Aboleth doing?
Nothing.
No, really, it's not doing anything.
>>46875947
If you knew about aboleths and the shit they did/do and you just find one in a random pool underground just chillaxing doing literally nothing? I'd be terrified as theres no ways its not doing some nefarious thing and its just not talking.
I don't care if its nappin while its billion year plan in the making is fermenting and all he has left to do is sit and wait for a millenia till it works out.
The problem with ancient abominations with millenial plots is that their INT and WIS are capped to GM score.
>>46866704
>seeing elementals
>>46876106
So,always 10
>>46876156
Often less so, especially in the latter case. Running a believable world is a precarious endeavour, precipitated on not showing the players the 'backstage' as it were. A villain intellectually superior to the one running it, and by orders of magnitude, requires warping the world to give an illusion of mental acuity beyond mortal aspiration. It's the hollywood genius problem: either make everyone else tassets-on-head retarded or rely on the audience not to apply reasoning to the world.
>>46857395
Nope. Aboleths have parent to child memory transfer, meaning each and every Aboleth remembers the genesis of every species because they/their ancestor witnessed it or they got told about it by another Aboleth who did. All except one. Illithids. They just turned up one day making their little city states and spreading their tentacles. This terrifies the shit out of Aboleths. These powerful psychic manipulators have the power to challenge Aboleths at their own game and /no/ /one/ /knows/ /where/ /they/ /came/ /from/.
>>46876551
They've never heard of the possibility or even the concept of time travel? Are they just so used to knowing everything first-hand that they can neither put 2 and 2 together and guess, nor ask or investigate to form a conclusion based on evidence as opposed to direct experience?
"I didn't see it happened to it couldn't have happened aaaaaaahhhhhh"
Friggin' autismoleths.
>>46876594
Not on the scale where what amounts to an entire civilisation time travels back overnight. Even for the Illithid Empire in the far future, it was a feat of magic unseen in all history before then.
>>46855063
They support powergaming and minmaxing, when the party is made of muh narrative roleplayers
But then
If the party is made of powergaming minmaxers, the Aboleth supports roleplaying and muh narrative!
And the Aboleth has DM fiat on its side telling the players they are playing the game wrong and passive-aggressively punishing players for too much "rollplaying" or too much "escapist faggotry".
>but what if your party doesn't powergame and also doesn't roleplay?
The aboleth is weak to that! You can defeat it relatively easily!
>>46876760
But then...What if the players minmax in a way the fits the narrative of the campaign?
>>46876908
It is then when the Aboleth is at its strongest.
>>46859192
Then you're probably autistic. It's not exactly a massive logical leap
>>46876908
...
OH SHIT you broke the campaign and my aboleth enemy! It was meant to be the main villain and you rekt it ez!
Gimme a few hours while I make up some bullshit. You guys okay with going into a computer generated random dungeon?
>>46877040
>not "rolling"* behind the screen where the enemies "stat block"* also happens to be
>not hiding these for reasons of "suspense"* and to "hinder powegaming"**=DM Fiat
