D&D has no shortage of monsters whose shtick is to mimic inanimate objects to trick PCs into their trap. The cloaker pretends to be a cloak, the executioner's hood pretends to be what it sounds like, the lurker above pretends to be a ceiling (lurker below is the aquatic variant), the trapper pretends to be a floor, etc. At one point, Pathfinder made the interesting and logical connection between the three species of executioner's hood, lurker above and trapper. Pathfinder posits that they are different life stages of the same "lurking ray" species: juvenile, male, and female respectively.
What struck me as odd is that Pathfinder did not make a similar connection with the cloakers or cuero. Given the vast size disparity between the tiny executioner's hood and the huge lurker above and trapper, the cuero or cloaker makes sense as an intermediate stage. The progression seems quite simple. Young pretend to be small articles of clothing, such as an executioner's hood. Juveniles pretend to be larger pieces of cloth, such as cloaks and tapestries. Adult males blend in with ceilings, while adult females blend in with floors.
Supposedly the cloaker is a creation of the aboleth (who created a lot of races). This may or may not also apply to the other lurking rays. The cuero may be degenerate cloakers, or the ancestral stock mutated by the aboleth in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment