Page 10 - Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations

they wish to travel. Nevertheless, some creatures have made DREAMS OF MAD GODS
the journey—including the bizarre grell, which emigrated Not all deities belong to the pantheons of human or humanoid
from another Material Plane only a few generations past. gods. Dark and powerful divinities with little or no interest
Aberrations native to entirely different multiverses and in humankind lurk in the universe, seeking only to propagate
cosmologies do not always come through the Plane of Shadow their own alien visions of creation and existence. Whether as a
to reach the normal world. Various forms of gates and other deliberate act or as a simple side effect of their own existence,
world-spanning magic permit a knowledgeable traveler to these alien divinities create monstrous beings to terrorize and
reach an entirely different world with a mere step. corrupt the world of humankind.

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THE ORIGIN OF THE CHUULS
The monstrous, rapacious chuuls are a created race, brought terrifying and powerful, but the process of creating chuuls was ABERRATION? WHAT IS AN CHAPTER 1
into existence artificially through magic and science. slow and difficult. They could not be produced quickly or in
Chuuls were created several hundred years ago by the arch- great quantities. After about a century of steady work, he had
wizard and would-be emperor Ashranezr. A man of rare genius assembled approximately six hundred chuuls. Ashranezr was a
and ambition, he was also quite mad. Regarding himself as an patient man, but not that patient.
incipient deity, he set his sights on nothing less than the con- Rather than continuing to build in complete secrecy,
quest of the world. Ashranezr decided to put his six hundred chuuls to work. While
Ashranezr first attracted notice because of his unique physi- he expanded his army, they aided his cause by disrupting the
cal characteristics: He was half-man and half-sahuagin, but flow of daily life in nearby kingdoms and empires. The wizard
not by birth. Through self-surgery and magical techniques of sent his chuuls in teams to assassinate generals, attack ship-
his own devising, he had infused himself with the hardiness, ping, raid coastal towns, and spread terror and chaos wherever
strength, and savagery of the sea devils. None of his notes sur- they could.
vived his demise, and he had no pupils or apprentices, so the It was a terrible miscalculation. While Ashranezr kept to
exact process of transformation was lost with him. Most would himself, the world paid no attention to him. When he turned
judge that to be a good thing. his monsters loose against his neighbors, it didn’t take schol-
Ashranezr’s home lay in an island chain, in an unknown lo- ars long to rediscover what had been forgotten about the ec-
cation beneath the water. In his submerged stronghold, using centric wizard who created abominable lifeforms from bits of
the secret procedures perfected on his own body, he began ex- numerous creatures and who had transformed himself into a
perimenting with the breeding and alteration of other creatures. part-man, part-fish monstrosity.
Strange, hybrid creatures were commonly seen in the vicinity of With his chuuls dispersed across the world looking for
his lab for many years, but none were replicated in large num- trouble, Ashranezr himself had little means of defending him-
bers or caused much havoc. During those years, Ashranezr was self against the magical assault loosed against him. In only a
considered to be an extreme eccentric, but not terribly danger- few months his lair was located and stormed, and Ashranezr
ous. He kept to himself, and his odd creatures, while startling, himself was slain in a magical onslaught.
were short-lived and shy. Nearby wizards’ guilds gradually lost His chuuls, however, were still loose. They never received
interest in Ashranezr’s activities and left him completely alone. any instructions to desist. Unaware that their creator was dead,
That was what he wanted. they continued wreaking havoc as ordered. Their depredations
At the culmination of decades of research and experimenta- slowed down over the centuries as attrition and madness took
tion, Ashranezr bred the first chuuls—part crustacean, part their toll. The surviving chuuls now proceed cautiously. Some
insect, and part amphibian—to serve as terrifying warriors in the learned of Ashranezr’s death and abandoned his program.
army of conquest he dreamed of creating. The chuuls were not Others abandoned their original instructions in order to
Ashranezr’s first creations, but they were his first true success. pursue their own agendas. Some reverted to little more than
The chuuls were not simply altered from existing creatures. clever but wild beasts, due to defects in their construction.
They were entirely new creations, with attributes and powers Of the six hundred first chuuls created by Ashranezr, per-
never before seen in natural creatures. At the beginning, the haps two hundred have survived the centuries since their
greatest obstacle was their short life span. Typically, one of creator’s destruction. Each one of these survivors is extraor-
Ashranezr’s hybrid creatures would survive only a few months dinarily large, strong, clever, and cruel. From these first-born
or a year before suffering fatal tissue decay. When the wizard chuuls, generations of younger, lesser chuuls have spawned.
found the solution for this problem, he didn’t merely extend (For game purposes, the first chuuls are advanced specimens
their lives to a normal duration. He hit upon a method that of Huge size and maximum Hit Dice, while the succeeding
eliminated aging entirely. Barring violence, Ashranezr’s crea- generations are represented by the standard chuul in the
tures would live forever. Monster Manual.) Without the special procedures and infu-
With his great breakthrough, Ashranezr’s dreams of godhood sions of Ashranezr’s laboratories to strengthen them and
reached fruition. He could (and did) easily make himself im- extend their lifespan, these chuul-spawn are mortal, living
mortal. How could such a man bow to any mortal? What sort little more than one hundred years. They lack the power of
of position could the world offer a man such as Ashranezr? The their specially bred forebears. However, they are far more nu-
only reward worthy of his genius was an honor that did not exist: merous, and their numbers are slowly growing. While chuuls
to be emperor of the entire world. might never conquer the world as Ashranezr once dreamed,
The first step would be to create an army of chuuls. Ashranezr’s they have certainly brought terror, havoc, and death to many
soldiers could survive nearly anywhere, land or sea. They were lands and waters.
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