Aberrations
These otherworldly creatures by all accounts originate from the most bizarre of the outer planes of existence. No mere Devil, Demon, or Celestial, these creatures are bizarre in their intelligence and utterly alien. Beware dear reader for the stories I present here are disturbing in nature.
The Aboleth of Secomber
A harrowing tale told to me by an old miller in Daggerford. Aboleth seem to be the relics of time forgotten, each a minor god with memories as old as the water they lair within. I've personally read of Aboleths in other ancient lore. Their followers are always put under some enchantment that keeps them happy no matter the circumstance.
One year in me youth, strange lights appeared out over the High Moor at night. Any of the daring youth who investigated never returned from the moors. One such was his close friend Enos who went out on a dare while drunk. Not two days later the miller sees his friend come marching back towards down, a smile on his face though his clothes were slick with moisture.
"Come friend! Come with me to the moors, I have found god and he desires your presence!" he says to me. So I goes. I followed him out onto the moors and up to a cave entrance. The whole place was slick with slime and soon it opened up onto an underground lake. There were all of the people missing from the town there and more. All of them has this sense of euphoria on their faces.
Something under the water moved. A thought that wasn't mine manifested in my head and a long slithering tentacle reached out of the water towards me. I won't deny I fucking ran like no tomorrow. Didn't stop till I reached daggerford. I heard that more and more people disappeared from town until some adventurers put a stop to it.
Delmont the Miller
I checked with Daggerford's records and while the town the miller mentioned is in the records, no one seemed to know where it was. My own explorations of the area north of the High Moor revealed no signs of the village.
Slaad in Karse
Not many threats can take on a village of elves. But I was told this tale by a wood elf loremaster who wished not to have their name recorded. The Elves refer to them as "Slaad" which translates roughly to "Chaos-Frog". Apparently this frog-like creature infects its prey with small tadpoles which gestate over several months.
A village once stood deep in the forest named Karse. Its people were happy and lived off the land, pursuing crafts and cultural progress. One day during a poetry recital, a blue frog-like humanoid appeared out of thin air in the crowd. They sought to greet this traveler but it did not understand them. Instead it attacked with its great maw and jagged claws.
The village slew it with ease as many were warriors and any superficial damage was healed. The village forgot about this small event in their long lives. But three months and a day after the attack, each person who was injured by the creature suddenly convulsed. A small tadpole burst from their chest, killing them.
This was our first recorded encounter with the Slaad. Creatures of pure chaos who spread by infesting other creatures with eggs. A powerful healing must be applied to those who have been attacked by a slaad, lest they fall to the same fate as our village.
Apparently the elves have several more stories of the Slaad, who always appear randomly and attack before they are slain or retreat. Only the most extreme restoration spells appear to work on the gestating individuals.
The False Hydra of Auckney
I, Volothamp Geddarm, have compiled this lore from my interviews with several survivors of an alleged False Hydra attack and seen fit to add it to this treatise of myths and urban legends for posterity sake. These people were all categorically insane and undergoing treatment at Candlekeep Assylum.
While it sings I do not see
The many wrongs that cannot be
Its soothing song comforts me
When silence falls it's best to flee
For next time it sings, it sings of thee
~ An alleged survivor of a False Hydra attack, thoroughly confabulated.
Recorded by Volothamp Geddarm after the 1453 Incident at Auckney
A creature which I will call a "False Hydra" managed to worm its way into the minds of this entire town as it ate people one by one. The victims I interviewed couldn't tell me the names of anyone it ate, and their minds were seething paranoid messes.
Eventually it grew large enough to sprout several heads, each as ravenous as the rest. According to the victims, it forced the remaining townsfolk to dig it up out of the ground, and to slay any who disobeyed. These few survivors fled and were picked up by a Baldur's Gate patrol, their arms stained with blood.
The Lord's Alliance sent a party to investigate the town and they returned with reports of a many-headed creature's corpse half-unearthed with no townsfolk nearby, but plenty of digging utensils. The census of the town indicated that some two hundred souls used to live there, and that this number decreased rapidly over the course of only a few months.
Quori of Settlestone
A disturbing tale of enchantment centered on the dreams of the townsfolk. Settlestone was apparently haunted by a group of Quori spirits. This story comes from a dwarven historian from the Silver Marches.
The Villagers of Settlestone were a peaceful bunch. They ran a quarry that mined exceptional quality quartz. One dark winter while work was stopped for the blizzards, the villagers began writing about horrible nightmares. Nameless fears and monstrosities harrowing them in their sleep.
It got so bad that many of the journals we recovered indicate that the townsfolk feared sleep, lest they wake up with wounds and scars they didn't have before. Some apparently aged decades after a single night's rest. Paranoia gripped the town and several attempted to flee through the blizzard but were never heard from again.
When the snow stopped, Mithral Hall sent a messenger to see how the town fared and found every townsperson dead. Some sort of mania had caused the living to turn on each other, it was a gory scene.
I, Volothamp Geddarm, had never heard of Quori before this but I was shown the town as well as the journals recovered and it was a disturbing scenario.