Tsochar
| Game background | |
|---|---|
| Title(s) | The Weavers of Flesh |
| Home plane | An undiscovered alien world within the material plane |
| Power level | Uncertain |
| Alignment | Usually Chaotic Evil |
| Design details | |
Publication history
The Tsochar were described in third edition in Lords of Madness (2005).[1]
Description
Fearsome invaders from a distant realm, the tsochari are a race of monstrous imposters, creatures that can steal the bodies of their victims and pass unnoticed in humanoid society. They lust after magic, especially arcane magic, and eagerly seek out humanoid wizards to replace so they can gain access to spells they otherwise could not wield.
A tsochar resembles a tangled mess of knotted ropes or a ball of barbed wire. It has dozens of thin but strong tentacles, each studded with small, sharp, sicklelike claws. Its body is little more than a thickening and joining of its multiple limbs. The creature’s eyes are small, dark orbs that rest at the end of smaller, thinner tentacles, well hidden in the mass of its other limbs, and its mouth is a round, lamprey-like orifice in the middle of its underside. The tsochar is an indigo blue in color, with a mottled pattern of lighter blue spots on its upper surface.
Tsochari speak their own language, but they can use their telepathy to communicate with other creatures. A typical tsochar is about 2 feet in diameter, although some of its longer tentacles trail as much as 6 to 8 feet from its central mass, and weighs about 25 pounds.
Anatomy
The tsochari are products of an alien world. Tsochar flesh is freakishly strong and tough, more like iron cable than the bodies of creatures of this world. This accounts for their damage reduction and their surprising strength.
A tsochar is not actually a single living creature, but instead an aggregate being. Each of the dozens of coiling tentacles and limbs that seem to comprise its body is, in fact, a living creature in its own right, known as a strand. A strand has its own nervous system and organs of respiration, digestion, and reproduction. Carefully detached from the rest of the body, a tsochar strand could live on indefinitely, but it would be virtually mindless. Only in close association with twenty or thirty similar strands, linked by nerve ganglia and blood vessels into a tangle, do the tsochar strands achieve a collective sentience and sense of self.
Like some of the simplest animals found in the mundane world (such as jellyfish), the tsochar strands show a degree of specialization for certain tasks. For example, the creature’s lamprey-like mouth (labeled 1 in the diagram on the next page) is actually a specialized structure composed of the mouthparts of four to eight strands, fused together in common growth. Fighting and motive limbs are another specialization, as are the sensory limbs with their dark eye-structures (2) at the tips. Since they share nervous tissue, blood vessels, and sentience, the tsochar strands collectively form a single entity, just as vulnerable to physical damage as a more mundane form of life.
A tsochar strand is about 3 to 8 feet in length and averages about half an inch in diameter, but it commonly coils and tangles with other strands close to the center of the body. Tsochar strands are strikingly strong and tough for their size and weight, armed with numerous sickle-like barbs (3). The barbs contain small grooves or channels through which the tsochar can inject its poison, but each barb administers only a tiny dose. It takes numerous tentacles working together to administer a dangerous dose of venom, which is why the tsochar only poisons creatures it is constricting.
The internal arrangement of a tsochar is minimal for such a complex creature. Within each strand, the vital organs are concentrated within a foot or so of the “front” end, the part of the creature that binds itself to the other strands. The brain (4) is a studded string of nerve ganglia resembling a string of pearls. The digestive tract (5) is an undifferentiated gullet that absorbs food from the collective “mouth” of the monster. Each strand pumps its own blood through a constriction of its motive muscles, which is why a tsochar at rest coils and seethes constantly. Tsochar take in oxygen through tiny holes (6) spaced along the length of their strands.
Relationships
The tsochari are contemptuous of most other forms of life. They recognize other powerful aberrations as kindred of a sort, and maintain cool relations with monsters such as neogi or mind flayers if conditions permit. While tsochari are far-ranging travelers with the ability and inclination to trade with other elder races, they dislike the fact that many other aberration races hold deities in little regard. Tsochari willingly ally with cloakers, which share their goals.
Humanoids are little better than steeds, mounts to be used and discarded at will. Humanoids exist to provide tsochari with wealth, magic, and ready sacrifices to the glory of beings such as Mak Thuum Ngatha. Tsochari look forward to the day when they can launch a truly massive incursion, seizing the bodies of high mages and great priests alike and establishing themselves as the eternal and secret masters of enslaved humanity.
References
- ↑ Baker, Richard, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter, Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations, Wizards of the Coast, 2005