Watercolor D&D Monsters Part 3 - Flumph

I got a LOT of requests to paint a Flumph in my style, so here he is. I actually didn’t know a lot about Flumphs before I did this, I never used them in a campaign before. I just knew them from their weird art in the 5e monster manual. But having done a ton of research for this painting, I see why people love them so much now. A really leaned into the jellyfish inspiration, reimagining their spikes as stingers. I also gave them a more alien, snail-like eye stalk to lean into why surface dwellers would be so uncomfortable around them.

TW: self-deletion ideation / ritual blood letting / fantasy violence For context: During on of our sessions of Curse of Strahd, my groups Wild Magic Sorcerer had a wild magic surge that summoned four Flumphs, weird telepathic jellyfish critters that feed on psychic energy without a mean bone in their boneless body, to Barovia. So far he's accidentally summoned a unicorn from another campaign and a modron. I've ruled that these summoned creatures are also trapped in Barovia and don't go back at the specified time. So these Flumphs are stuck in Barovia now. One of my players pitched an idea, two players out of our group of six were going to be out of town a few sessions later and instead of cancelling we'd run a one shot where the remaining players played as the Flumphs trying to find safety in Barovia while they waited out the end of Strahd's reign. We'd call this one-shot, Flumph Quest.

Flumph Quest: My players decided their Flumphs were named Flarp, Tooty, Foop, and Smeth. Fantastic start! 10 out of 10 Flumph names. Little did I know that this seemingly innocent idea would devolve into the weirdest most f*cked up fever-dream of a session I've ever run. They immediately decided that, since wild magic table specified that they were afraid of the caster, that they kinda hated that guy and wanted to avoid him. The caster in question is a Kender, a hafling adjacent people from Dragonlance setting, so he's the most happy go lucky little shortstack of a man. They hate / fear him and despite his immaculate vibes they most flee from his general vicinity. They telepathically attempt to sense where the best vibes are in Vallaki and found that they were coming from the direction of Blinsky, the local joyful and macabre toy-maker, and set out in that direction from the Blue Water Inn. They were immediately attacked by the Vallaki guards, who had neither seen or heard of a Flumph before in their life, and the party was forced to use one of the Flumphs abilities, as one of my players said, "Ink" on all the guards. Now that the guards were sufficiently smelly, horrified, and gagging from the general smell. They resumed their journey to the Blinsky's Toys unaccosted. At this point they've decided that in our universe "Always trust the vibes." is an ancient Flumph proverb. When they reach Blinsky's toys they all slam their weird lil' jellyfish bodies into the window and spy on Blinsky to better understand the vibes. The group calls out to Blinsky telepathically and he opens the door and talks to the air not noticing the group of Flumphs smooshed into the window pane. After talking to what he believes to be strange invisible beings, he invites them to come in to his shop. When Blinsky sees the Flumphs, he believes he must've taken some of the inspiration mushrooms he uses to invent all of his wacky toys. (This is a new development and I add Blinsky takes shrooms now to my GM notes) Blinsky is pretty chill about the Flumphs since he believes they are hallucinations. They see Piccolo, Blinsky's pet monkey in a tutu, and are fascinated believing it to be a small fuzzy human (they're not entirely wrong - I guess). Blinsky has to clarify that Piccolo is not his child and attempts to explain what a monkey is. One of the Flumphs, Foop, decides that Piccolo could use a hug. Piccolo screams bloody murder, but the Flumphs think that's just beautiful singing. After all, the Drow in their former home in the Underdark would make people sing (scream) like that when they took them into their special tool shed (torture room). The Flumphs all attempt to telepathically "sing" with Piccolo which amounts to them creating a chorus of psychic screams. They thanked Piccolo for his song and released him from the hug - Piccolo ran for his life and fled to the backrooms the moment the hug ended.[I remind the groups that Flumphs have a +2 modifier to both Intelligence and Wisdom - this will continue to be ignored during roleplay for the purposes of having more fun with socially unaware and incredibly naive Flumphs]

Blinsky asked for a hug from the Flumphs, which in the moment, and I'm not proud of this, I described as a "PG rated hentai" as the dude was covered in the Flumphs tentacles. The Flumphs all turn bright pink as the psychically feed on Blinsky's good vibes and general amusement with life. Aside from my poor choice of descriptors the whole thing is pretty wholesome. Blinsky starts to make toys based on the Flumphs.

Someone, I can't remember which of them said this first, suggested that having more arms increased your vibes. They discussed at length different methods of acquiring extra arms and sticking them to themselves or Blinsky to help bolster his already mighty vibe. Blinsky talked them down from ripping arms off of people and sticking them to Blinsky. He convinced them that dead people don't need arms and that there are dead people in the ground at the local church. The Flumphs considered graverobbing - but then somebody suggested that Blinsky's vibe was so good because he had less arms. For science Foop tries to pull off Flarps arm, but ends up getting theirs accidently pulled off- the vibes improved, but only did so because of the novelty of having one of their arms popped off. We also decided that Flumphs can't feel pain because they're like jellyfish and just don't have pain receptors - fun!

Blinsky is then tasked with sewing Foop's tentacle back on. Throughout all of this Blinsky has explained some of the dangers of Barovia. The Flumphs make the logical conclusion that for protection they must appease the thing they find the most frightening, which would be the main Curse of Strahd campaign's kender wild magic sorcerer. They were still terrified of him so they decided they would need to appease him. In an earlier conversation with Blinsky they learned about vampires drank blood and interpreted that as a kinda cultural exchange and decided they would need to offer the main campaign's sunshine character a blood offer.

(Very on brand for Curse of Strahd I'm proud of them for that messed leap in logic.)

There was one issue with offer blood. Flumphs have similair biology to jellyfish and do not have blood. They debated where to get blood and from there I cannot remember if I had Blinsky offer to give blood or if they asked him, but next thing we know Blinsky is pouring some of his own blood into a wooden cup for these Flumphs which have become his new best friends. Blinsky then donates a little too much blood and loses consciousness. The Flumphs panic and telepathically call out for help. Yeska, the ward of the local priest, walks in see the Flumphs and screams because if you see a big psychic jellyfish thing you'd probably scream about it too.

Anyways, I roll for another NPC passerby to keep things interesting and get the same number I rolled as last time - so I have Yeska overcome his fear and walk back into the shop. He's heard that angels can look really weird and thinks the Flumphs are weird angels because they want someone to heal Blinsky. Yeska, doesn't have healing magic, but he knows a bit about medicine and I roll a nat 20 medicine check for the kid so he does some excellent triage and ensure Blinsky doesn't bleed out.

Yeska give the Flumphs a rundown on the local religion and when it comes to discussing the afterlife and how great it is the Flumphs decide that they'd love to go to the after life because it probably has delicious vibes for them to eat. I remind them again that Flumphs have a +2 modifier to intelligence and wisdom. The bit continues to be stronger than the rules.

Yeska informs them that going to the afterlife involves dying and that you don't get to go if you try to go early. Side, tangent but its wild that my players made me explain many religions views on self-deletion from the perspective of a child - like I did not wake up expecting this to be part of the plot ever.

Anyways, Yeska agrees to take them back to the local church so they can discuss theology and how they can get to the afterlife, but first they had to deliver their offering of blood to our kender sorcerer. They cause a stir when they enter the Blue Water Inn, but Urwin (who is a long time friend / father figure to the kender sorcerer) is used to all sort of wild magic shenanigans and accepts the now coagulated blood in a wooden cup. (Edit: The group reminded me that this cup was dubbed the "Chalice of Good Vibes". I roleplay out the kender sorcerer being offered the blood by Urwin which was ultimately incinerated by the groups wildfire druid and shadow sorcerer characters.

Back to the Flumph plot, they arrive at the church, the priest freaked out, but with Yeska explaining some of the situation was convinced that these odd creatures were not a threat.

As the Flumphs were discussing their desire to go to the after life. They are hastily picked off one-by-one by a monster hunter NPC, add to the campaign via a player's backstory, that's a little trigger happy. As the Flumphs die they express their sincere happiness that they'll get to go to the afterlife.

The priest chastises the monster hunter NPC who brushes the whole thing off and continues heading out of town. Both Yeska and the priest agree to give the Flumphs a proper burial and observe all religious rites to make sure they have a happy after life. Meanwhile Blinsky is just on the ground in his shop unconscious.

Look at my knitted Flumph! It sits in a spoon to show off its levitating properties. The eye stalks have metal wire in them to give it a 360 degree range of vision

I kept forgetting to upload this. So I am running Waterdeep for my friends, and since their party is a little unbalanced with there only being three of them and none of them are full-casters, I gave them a lil' side kick.