Don't you just hate it when your dog marks his territory by
calling up a polar vortex via control
weather? Or how every time you
try to give him a bath, he spontaneously turns into 6-ton killer whale?
No? Your dog
doesn’t do that? Ever? Huh. Weird.
Move over owlbear…we’ve got a wolforca! By which I mean the akhlut, of
course. Which would be tempting to
make fun of, except 18 Hit Dice, Huge size, and a swallow whole attack that
does bludgeoning and cold damage have
a way of commanding respect. Plus,
the akhlut comes from Inuit myths, so it has a pedigree we can respect. Besides, how can you not love a
creature that creates entire storms on a daily basis just to mark its
territory? And the spectacle of a
killer whale storming onto shore as a Huge wolf and completing its charge in
the following round (with a +8 initiative bonus) is too cinematic for
words.
I’m guessing locals would regard akhluts as practically
divine beings, given their storm calling ability—perhaps even as protectors, since
they drive predators like winter wolves, sharks, and frost worms away. Of course, how they go about avoiding
or placating such a beast might have nasty ramifications for PCs…
Whalers become the
hunted when an iceberg sinks their ship and their lifeboats are set upon by
killer whales. Adventurers
hitching a ride with the whalers have just helped get one of the boats ashore
when a killer whale bursts out of the water and becomes a giant wolf right
before their very eyes…
The We Shu folk
regard cetaceals and akhluts as two sides of the same coin, the yin and
yang of the sea. Some clans even
take to revering one or the other as totem spirits. Those that respect the akhlut celebrate storms, prefer to
hunt or fish to tending any crops, and often engineer “accidents” to happen to
strangers so that their akhlut totem animal remains well fed.
When the low-lying
Yangmarahji Jungle floods after the monsoon season, the forest floor
becomes one giant estuary. Bull
sharks, giant crabs, and river dolphins with fierce underbites swim between the
trees as if they were born there.
But the Yangmarahji is a darkly magical place, and some of those
dolphins have settled in the jungle for good. When the waters recede, the giant river dolphins take the
forms of wolves or boars and continue hunting. This causes little trouble for the area’s flying apes, the
derhii, but other travelers might not be so lucky. (These tropical akhlut are partly responsible for the jungle’s
rainy climate even during the dry season, and they are immune to the effects of
silt, quicksand, or sinkholes.)
—Pathfinder Bestiary 3
11
After Friday’s post, knightdisciple analyzed Agyra in a way
that put my reading to shame. Some
highlights:
One thing that comes
to mind is that the multiple heads and breathing lightning, as well as a big
tail whipping all over the place, also reminds me of King Ghidorah. Which makes
this a three-for-one Kaiju special!
See, this is the kind of expert testimony a Toro newb like
me can't deliver! Then he dug deep
into the stats:
No matter what, while
Agyra’s not overly talkative (Int 3), it/she is scary good at intuiting motive
(Wisdom 29!).
A great point, and this calls to mind the Zillo Beast from
Season Two of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The Zillo Beast wasn’t much of a
planner or thinker, reacting primarily to stimuli. But it had an uncanny ability to sense motive, able to
immediately identify Chancellor Palpatine—a Sith Lord canny enough to be able
to act right under Yoda’s nose, no
less—as a malevolent threat and the source of suffering to be extinguished.
And, of course:
I will say the Pacific
Rim Fanboy in me wants to say there’s a monster of some sort, like, a golem or
something, that PCs can control that’s at least of a size with Kaiju.
Alternatively, maybe crafting such a defensive artifact is the culmination of a
Kaiju-centric campaign!
*Forehead slam* Why did I not think of that?!? My helm is off to you,
knightdisciple. And for you and
all the other PR fanfolk out there, there’s an old Companion-level D&D
adventure you have to check out: Earthshaker by David “Zeb” Cook. I’ve never read it, but I know it
features an adventure inside one such
gnome-constructed mecha. And if
you want your mecha to fight other mechas, The
Book of Wondrous Inventions, edited by Bruce A. Heard, reveals the Alphatian
and Glantrian answer to the Earthshaker in the form of a transforming golem,
Jaggar’s Transforming Gargantoid. Happy hunting for both books!
Anyway, read all of knightdisciple’s post here.
Finally, regarding yesterday’s post…who am I kidding? Anyone who has seen even one of my
character sheets knows I would read the hell out of Elves of Golarion III, IV, L, or whatever. Once you go elf, other races go on the
shelf.
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