So a lot has happened in the past year regarding the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Wizards nuked their credibility and Hasbro is turning the IP into a mobile game microtransaction hellscape. The OGL is... well, for the first time since it's creation it's now considered poison and its former fans are now moving away from it.
So... fuck it. I'm gonna start a new series on substitutes from iconic D&D monsters. I'm gonna make up some ideas based on my past readings of various other monster substitutes and then I'm gonna release my writeups into the public domain so that everyone can use my ideas anywhere forever. You don't even have to credit me if you don't want to. I'm not doing this for recognition or profit, I'm doing it to satisfy my creative urge.
So let's start with one of the most popular ones: the mind flayer and the aboleth. I've seen several different takes on these, with the most detailed being the Phrenic Scourge by Lion's Den Press and later Dreamscarred Press, the Possessors by Ronin Arts, and the Lethid by Bad Axe Games. The latter also included effective substitutes for the displacer beast, the puppeteer, and the intellect devourer. I can't expect anyone reading this to shell out for a bunch of old books that may not even be available anymore, so I'm gonna just makeup a writeup here recycling those ideas but sanitized of any clearly identifiable IP. I guess.
So here goes... The following writeups I release in the public domain.
Alien Horrors: The Squiddies
The Squiddies are an alien race that lives by enslaving and parasitizing other species they encounter. They come in many different castes with different properties, all of which bear some superficial resemblance to deep sea invertebrates like cephalopods and crustaceans. They all have some form of psychic powers.
The most infamous form is the aptly named Tentacled Horror. These creatures are composed entirely of worm-like tendrils attached to a central trunk. They have no faces, eyes, mouths, limbs, or other remotely humanoid features. They can breathe and thrive equally well in air or water. They can maintain a loosely upright form with tendrils arranged to mimic a pair of arms and conceal their appearance by wearing cloaks and such. They have a variety of psychic powers, but the most dangerous is an area of effect attack that temporarily incapacitates the minds of their targets. The ends of their tendrils constantly shed and regrow like fingernails, but serve a key role in their reproduction: these ends are their parasitoid larval form. Upon contact with a potential host, the larvae will burrow into the body and make its way to the brain. It will instantly kill the host once it reaches the brain, then consume the corpse as nourishment until it reaches its adult size. Larvae that fail to find a host quickly die.
Some larvae are particularly hardy and can survive a fair amount of time after being shed. However, these ones exhibit abnormal growth and properties. If they find and take a host, rather than killing and consuming it they instead attach themselves to the brain and take control of the body. This allows the Squiddies to use the host as an infiltrator. These internal puppeteers can reproduce by extending a tendril from their host's mouth that sheds new larvae.
Although all Squiddies reproduce asexually as described above, there are dedicated breeder forms sometimes called "queens." These queens are massive conglomerations of tentacles that continuously spawn swarms of larvae, or in some variants puppeteer parasites (see below). They can also be used as signal boosters for telepathy due to their size.
There's some genetic transfer when larvae consume their hosts. The Squiddies have exploited this property to breed a number of different castes with more specialized purposes. These include bulky warriors covered in crustacean armor, lithe infiltrators that disguise themselves with psychic illusions, etc.
Perhaps the most grotesque castes are the various dedicated parasite forms. Perhaps selectively bred from the hardier larvae mentioned above, these parasites are much more versatile.
The tiny leech ray resembles a mix of manta ray and leech, like those aliens in The Puppet Masters. Once it finds a suitable host (typically humanoid), it burrows inside the body and attaches to the spinal column to exert influence over the host's mind. While unable to freely dominate the host and reliant on subterfuge, it is so deeply embedded in the nervous system that it cannot be removed safely without surgical means. Otherwise, their psychic abilities are minimal. They serve as spies and saboteurs.
The flying head squid is a mass of tentacles that uses telekinesis to fly through the air. Upon finding a suitable host (preferably humanoid), it engulfs the hosts head and takes control of their nervous system. Their psychic abilities are useful in combat, so they serve a similar role to the tentacled horrors. They can puppeteer dead hosts, but cannot halt the inevitable decomposition. They have venomous tentacles that they may attack with whether hosted or unhosted.
The plane jumping squid outwardly resembles the flying brain squid, but prefers to target large animal hosts. It attaches externally to the spinal column and pumps the host full of stimulants and steroids, using its long tentacles to supplement the host's natural weapons (these tentacles drip sedative venom). It's psychic abilities are minimal, but it has a plane jumping ability that it can use to teleport between two points any distance apart so long as the entrance and exit points meet a criterion specific to each plane jumping squid. This could be shadows, flat mirrored surfaces, corners inside vertices, knots, smoke, book pages, etc.
Then there are two enslaver forms that control victims through psychotropic means.
The hidden master puppeteer is a mass of tentacles arranged in the shape of a huge aquatic fish. It is physically impressive and a gifted illusionist, but by far its most impressive feature is the acid ooze constantly secreted from its body. While this acid ooze may be sprayed as a defensive weapon, its primary purpose is to spread a contagious brain-rotting disease. Vertebrate animals of lower intelligence exposed to the ooze contract a brain-rotting disease that rots their nervous systems and turns them into zombies under the master puppeteer's control. A single master puppeteer may control and see through the senses of hundreds of zombies at once up to a couple dozen miles away from it. Master puppeteers typically specialize in one or two species, such as rats or other vermin.
The true master puppeteer is an even more powerful version of the hidden master puppeteer. Its psionic abilities are vast: in addition to mental manipulation and illusions, it can warp spacetime to damage opponents. It's brain-rotting slime affects creatures of higher intelligence and its control radius is at least doubled. Its zombies ooze infectious acid slime, produce a maddening drone, and the master can use them as extensions of itself to extend it psionic powers' range!
These are just a small selection of the possible castes that you can devise. Feel free to invent your own!
