Witchlight marauder
| Witchlight Marauder | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II (1991) |
| In-universe information | |
| Type | Abberation |
| Alignment | Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil, or True Neutral |
The witchlight marauder is a fictitious weapon-of-mass-destruction in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy campaign setting known as Spelljammer.
Within the Spelljammer universe, witchlight marauders were introduced by the orcs during the first Unhuman War. Thought to be completely destroyed by the elves before these living weapons could be used, rumors and legends persist that several primary marauders were preserved.
Publication history
The witchlight marauder (including the primary witchlight marauder, the remote witchlight marauder, the secondary witchlight marauder, the space witchlight marauder, and the tertiary witchlight marauder) appeared in second edition for the Spelljammer setting in the Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II (1991).[1] The secondary witchlight marauder and the tertiary witchlight marauder appeared in the adventure modules Goblin's Return (1991) and Heart of the Enemy (1992).
Description
Planet-bound marauders exists in three forms; the fourth one is capable of space travel. The three common forms are the primary, secondary and tertiary marauders.
- Primaries , the largest land marauder, are 500+ foot slug-like creatures with multiple mouths that can virtually eat anything and produce a miasma of poisonous gas and secondary marauders.
- Secondaries are 20 foot tall humanoids with metallic talons, steel teeth and a sweeping tail with stump-like, multi-toed feet. They appear headless since their faces are situated on their chest. They have the ability to spit acid. They could range the countryside, covering many miles, destroying survivors of the primaries attack.
- Tertiaries are small humanoids about 4 feet tall but have arms each ending in a sword-like blade. They sprout a mass of tentacles from were a neck should be. Uncanny strength and agility make them fearsome combatants.
This land marauders reach the targeted planet by means of a still larger creature, the space marauder. This 1,000+ foot reptilian monster travel wildspace on sails spun by special organs from their bodies. The sails could also be used to focus energy and fire beam weapons. Like their smaller kin, space marauders could virtually eat anything from ships, asteroids and even small moons to produce projectiles and primaries.
- Space marauders sport a multi-eyed crocodilian head filled with thousands of large, sharp teeth. Surrounding the central head were six flexible necks ending in eyeless heads capable of smashing ships. The necks are then connected to a trunk-like central body that ended in a pulsating mass of writhing tentacles. At the center of this squirming nest are three umbilicals, each connected to a primary.
- In addition to primaries, space marauders can give birth to remote marauders, 25 foot flying gullets that engulf matter, digest it and returns to the space marauder to give it additional nourishment.
Society
After a week of foraging a primary burrows underground and establishes a lair. A couple of weeks later, while being guarded by secondaries, it splits into to identical primaries. This cycle continued until the marauders run out of food, whereupon they turned on and destroyed each other.
Reproduction is initiated by eating a certain amount of food then ejecting either poisonous gas or secondaries for the primary marauder or tertiaries from the secondary marauder.
History
It is an alien creature created by orcish shamans as a means of countering ruthless elven aggression. Marauders are shock-troops, organic first-strike weapons, meant to devastate whole planets. It does this by consuming all organic matter and even precious minerals leaving nothing behind but a poisonous chunk of rock. Left by itself, it accomplishes this in a few years time.
Supposedly, all specimens were destroyed by the elves, but there is a possibility that some may have survived, held by time-stop fields in some planet or wandering a forgotten quadrant in wildspace.
Novels
The witchlight marauder made an appearance in the fourth book of the Cloakmaster Cycle series of novels.
References
- ^ Varney, Allen, ed. Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II (TSR, 1991)