Hidoran (5e Race)

Hidoran

“

They share an origin like the shoggoth... but they don't have the luxuries of being giant amoebas. No, they are bound to flesh as their creators were.

”

Experimentational Design

By Nabilah Nazmi

Hidoran are horrific creatures with a roughly humanoid upper body. Their heads are star-shaped, resembling the nose of a star-nosed mole. The arms of the star are actually feelers tipped with sensors. They originate radially from the large, black eyes that resemble that of a fly's compound eyes. They have a mouth that is constantly open, showing off sharpened teeth like that of a sea urchin. As they have no nose, it is believed the feeler son their heads can perceive pheromones instead. The rest of their body is quite bizarre. The upper torso is all black, with a translucent chest to reveal their rib structure, but not any organs. They have long arms that reach past their knees, ending with three fingers each. Their arms are partially metallic in nature, with their hands and forearms being more wooden. Below the lowest set of ribs, their skin turns reptilian and remains so until past the belly. The entire lower body is caked with tough, earthen skin like that of rock, and their back bent legs end in large, three-toed feet. They have special organs located between their skin and muscles that can be used to channel external magic into energy.

The Owned And The Free

The hidoran were truly the results of horrible design. In trying to make an optimal creature, many wizards and alchemists alike have resorted to artificially generating chimera creatures to serve their every need. If they wanted strength, they took from creatures like goliaths or enchanted limbs to be like the galeb duhr. For durability, the warforged chasses were used as bases along with creatures like the wooden treants. This resulted in many a monstrosity of which the hidoran originate from. However, they were not created by human wizards. The ones who made them were strange eldritch creatures with star-shaped heads and wings from another dimension where they used odd tools instead of magic. They created the hidoran alongside another slave creature that was made of amorphous jelly.

The two slaves were used mainly for construction purposes. However, the hidoran and the other slave race slowly gained higher sentience as their reproduction produced evolutions. They overthrew their masters and fled to Abeir-Toril, where they came to erect strange underground cities mirroring that of their former master's civilizations. They parted ways with their slave siblings and have thus lived in relative secret from the rest of society in the new world. In this new world, they came under assault by kingdoms threatened by their presence. Magic was very foreign to them and they had little ways to combat it at first. Their odd construction seemed to favor them eventually as they evolved an interesting mechanism allowing them to heal and absorb magic. With this, they drove back attacks and now their homes are too ill-reputed to be encroached upon anymore.

For The Master And For The Tribe

Hidoran retain a sense of hierarchy despite the lack of masters. The head of their group, called a tribe brood, is called the master. The master watches over activities from construction to expansion and breeding. These tribe broods are mainly known to dwell in caverns carved out by themselves embedded in mountains. They are very secretive and can be extremely hostile towards curious outsiders. There are horror stories about them nabbing unwary travelers off mountain trails to snack on. They are actually omnivores, but they only eat kelp vegetation, which is unattainable at their usual dwellings. Hidoran tribe broods are very tense environments. They are bonded through their scars as experiments, but they are not blindly trusting of their own either. There are rare relations held with them and creatures of dark places, like the drow. This has given them a bad reputation as not only horrid monsters but also collaborators with evil. In truth, they are simply very primal and cagey creatures. People think they are stupid when they harbor harbor some of the intelligence of that of their creators.

Hidoran Names

Hidoran names are guttural and full of lisps due to the configuration of their teeth. They do not differ much based on gender save for roles of reproduction.

Names: Felyssh, Grakaash, Tlathh, Nyanthuss, Kulngosh

Hidoran Traits

The hidoran are one of the mishaps formed of eldritch creation
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age. Hidoran hatch from sac-like ova and mature at about 7 years of age. They can live rather long, up to nearly 500 years before dying.
Alignment. Hidoran tend to be very chaotic and neutral, focused on their own affairs.
Size. They can be up to seven feet tall, or as short as four feet. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Protean Healing. Hidoran are very hardy due to what work they were engineered for. When you complete a short rest and use your hit dice to regain hit points, you regain 1 additional hit point per hit die that you expend.
Facial Sensors. Your sensitive feelers can feel vibrations as well as pheromones in the air. You are proficient in the Perception skill and you have advantage in Wisdom (Perception) checks to locate other creatures within your proximity.
Eldritch Diet. Your innards are a mix of many things, providing you a hardy stomach. You are immune to ingested poisons and diseases.
Magic Gorger. The hidoran evolved abilities to resist magic users to cover their weaknesses. When you take damage from a spell, you can as a reaction, siphon some of that magic off, empowering your next unarmed strike. This attack deals an additional 1d6 damage and the damage type is whatever the damage type of the damage of the spell was.
Monstrous Body. Your creature type is monstrosity instead of humanoid. As such, you are immune to spells like crown of madness or dominate person because they specifically target humanoids.
Languages. You can speak, read and write in Common and one other language of your choice.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
4′ 0''	+3d12	150 lb.	× (1d6) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

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