Termagant

Another Wes Schneider creation from the Inner Sea Bestiary, the kyton termagants are bloated maternal horrors—part woman, part iron maiden, part squid, part fiend.  If other kytons tend to be ascetics, sadomasochists, surgeons, and scientists, termagants shape life in quite a different way: as unholy surrogate mothers, adopting creatures as their “children,” warping them, and sending them—well, the few survivors—back into the world…presumably to fetch more adopted “siblings.”

The termagant stat block has lots of fun little details—bleed damage, 7(!) tentacle attacks, and let’s not forget that nasty, nasty ability-draining flux infusion/shared rupture combo…all of which add up to a hearty (womb-y?) CR 17. 

But I’m most interested in the Language line: Common, Infernal; telepathy 100ft.  Termagants are your excuse to role-play every overbearing, overdemanding mother from fiction ever.  The witch from Tangled, the Other Mother from Coraline, and especially the giant zombie mother from Braindead who attempts to unbirth Lionel back into her womb…these are the matriarchs just waiting to serve as models for the termagants in your game.

Disappointed in frail fetchling breeding stock, Prototype Eleven has made her way from the Plane of Shadow to the Material Plane.  She thinks dwarves and trox show a lot of potential; currently she has an entire trade delegation trapped in iron maidens, transfusing dwarf blood and trox ichor into the opposite species.  If this batch goes well, she hopes to bring the rest of her circle to join her.

The termagant Nix hates everything about maternity—she regards her transfiguration by the kyton demagogue Vulpinoss as a betrayal.  Still compelled to create life, she surrounds herself with constructs, clockwork abominations, and corrupted inevitables.

The Last Gravid Hope nests like a spider in the central spire of an otherwise seemingly bottomless chamber.  Suspended in the air around her are the bloated, gas-filled bodies of many of her poisoned children, floating like pustulent balloons.  Some can be ridden like dirigibles to approach the majestic termagant; the rest are primed to rupture.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 24

I’m watching artisticlicensetokill replay Bioshock as I type this.  Pretty much perfect for getting in a kyton’s mindset…

Good news, everyone!  My copy of the Bestiary 4 arrived today.  Look for Bestiary 4 monsters in this blog starting with the letter U and the udaeus.