#leng

Essos Fashion Studies: Leng

Image © John Meszaros, accessed at his deviantArt here

[The tirapheg is one of those monsters that, like the flumph, was tarred with the brush of "stupidest monster ever" by the irony-poisoned mid 2000s internet. However, unlike the flumph, it's never gotten much of a critical reappraisal. The reason for that, I believe, is that the tirapheg never made it into the Tome of Horrors. Paizo's editorial staff always had a soft spot for the flumph, having given it an official 3.5 D&D conversion with the Dungeon Magazine adventure "Box of Flumph", and so happily adopted ToH's OGL flumph into their setting, first through Misfit Monsters Redeemed, then Bestiary 3. WoTC copied Paizo's homework in making their flumphs kindly but endearingly pathetic. And now the flumph is on Magic cards and plush keychains and the like. Where's the love for the tirapheg? Perhaps the closest is Paizo's quelaunt, which is similarly faceless and has trilateral symmetry, but is much more powerful and explicitly malicious.

As @bogleech correctly pointed out, the tirapheg is inscrutable and horrifying. There's never been a canonical explanation for why the tirapheg is Like That, so I wanted to leave mine similarly vague, but seed a few possible explanations and add additional creepy details. I decided to tie it to Leng out of all Pathfinder's various Cthulhu Mythos homages and horror settings because most Leng denizens are pretty high CR, and so this could be used to seed the Plateau into a campaign from the start.

If you'd like to support what I do, see bonus monsters and maybe even sponsor your own creations, check out the Creature Codex Patreon here]

Tirapheg CR 3 N Aberration This shuffling thing is taller than an average man and roughly human shaped. It has three human-like heads, only the middle of which has eyes, nose and ears, the other two having indentations faintly resembling those sensory organs. None of the three heads has a mouth, but an oversized mouth with thin tentacles growing above it sits in the creature’s midsection. It has three arms, the exterior ones ending in a sharp spike and the central one having an articulated hand. The situation is similar with its three legs—the outer two end in stumps, while only the middle leg has an entire foot.

Tiraphegs are strange scavengers found deep within the Plateau of Leng, from whence they emerge into the Waking World. Their origins are unknown and perhaps unknowable. Many sages believe they are merely the living manifestations of nightmares, whereas others whisper that they are perhaps the tortured victims of the denizens of Leng, or even their malformed, rejected offspring. They tend to follow adventurers in the caverns where they dwell, shuffling slowly behind them while shying away from direct contact. Tiraphegs eat decaying flesh and fungi, and will gather the slain victims of a party to cache and let properly decompose for later. If a tirapheg is interrupted in their looting, or if something said or done by a party member startles them, they lash out violently.

In combat, a tirapheg attacks with its two spiked arms and grabs with its third. Tiraphegs instinctively go for the throat with their grips, preventing opponents from casting spells or crying out. The bizarre physiology of a tirapheg protects them from harm—they have a third eye in the back of their head, and their internal organs do not follow any sane pattern, making them very difficult to strike critically and impossible to flank. If they are surrounded or badly injured, they can create phantasmal duplicates of themselves in a flash of blinding, maddening light. The original tirapheg then typically makes a slow, hobbling retreat while its two duplicates battle to cover its escape before evaporating.

Tiraphegs usually make their dens in tight places inaccessible to larger predators. They appear to be comforted by the number 3—triplicate patterns are often scratched into the walls of their den, and multiple tiraphegs found in the same area will organize themselves into triads. Tiraphegs do not intentionally collect treasure, but small items like coins and jewelry may still be found on corpses they carry back to their lairs. It is unknown how they reproduce; tiraphegs have no discernable sexes, and young tiraphegs have not been observed. They cannot speak, but do understand Aklo; on the rare times communication has been successful, the tiraphegs merely scrawled into the dirt single words such as “cold”, “hunger” and “empty”.

"平靚正 (Peng leng zeng)" means well-priced and high quality which are literally the BEST words you wanna hear when you get to Chinatowns all over the world.

靚 leng also means beautiful and good looking and this is exactly how the slang Leng is used. [Source] [Source]

Side note: I am aware that Jamaican patois also has “Peng”, but it doesn’t have as much of an etymology to it as Han/Mandarin characters and Cantonese language (Cantonese is indigenous verbal tonal language like all Baiyue languages, so Peng & Leng would’ve come first, and then the Mandarin/Han written forms 平 & 靚).

Jamaican’s “peng” came from “kushempeng” (kush/weed is good), but if kush is a separate word, then Peng is a separate word, so where did the Jamaicans get Peng from?

Some suggest it originally was used by Canto weed sellers to say that the the kush/weed is inexpensive, then Canto (along with other Asian languages) made their way into the Jamaican patois as there is a significant Chinese-Jamaican population.

Then it was popularised to just mean “good weed” since the entire phrase in Canto approximates to “good/pleasing” anyways. Not to mention, the way Sinitic languages work is that the single character may reabsorb the meanings from its usage in common phrases. So using Peng on its own makes sense from a Canto etymology.

Leng itself has always retained the Canto meaning of being beautiful. “Ho leng” is what you hear from aunties if you’re a well-liked fem.

The Jamaican etymologies are still plausible and could be independently derived, rather than Canto-derived, as false cognates. But both the Jamaican and Canto slang have similar chances of being absorbed into UK slang.

And people just think it’s “British”. Nawh. Yall need to know how diverse the languages you’re using is. Especially with all the anti-immigrant shit in the UK.

Leng's history goes back almost as far as that of Yi Ti itself, but little and less of it is known west of the Jade Straits. There are queer ruins in the depths of the island's jungle: massive buildings, long fallen, and so overgrown that rubble remains above the surface...but underground, we are told, endless labyrinths of tunnels lead to vast chambers, and carved steps descend hundreds of feet into the earth. No man can say who might have built these cities, or when. They remain perhaps the only remnant of some vanished people.

The native Lengii are perhaps the tallest of all the known races of mankind, with many men amongst them reaching seven feet in height, and some as tall as eight. Long-legged and slender, with flesh the color of oiled teak, they have large golden eyes and can supposedly see farther and better than other men, especially at night. Though formidably tall, the women of the Lengii are famously lithe and lovely, of surpassing beauty.

It was mariners from the Golden Empire who opened Leng to trade, yet even then the island remained a perilous place for outsiders, for the Empress of Leng was known to have congress with the Old Ones, gods who lived deep below the ruined subterranean cities, and from time to time the Old Ones told her to put all the strangers on the island to death. This is known to have happened at least four times in the island's history if Colloquo Votar's Jade Compendium can be believed.

Legends persist that the Old Ones still live beneath the jungle of Leng. So many of the warriors that Jar Har sent down below the ruins returned mad or not at all that the god-emperor finally decreed the vast underground cities' ruins should be sealed up and forgotten. Even today, it is forbidden to enter such places, under penalty of torture and death.

large golden eyes that can see in the dark

golden-brown skin (oiled teak is about that color)

famously beautiful

super tall

live on the ruins of The Old Ones who whisper about slaughtering non natives

ruins turn men mad

i didn't put it in the quote but also note that leng is on the jade sea, where its believed dragons are from (alongside the shadow lands)

my question for you is "whom the fuck" but please note that "some different being" means a completely different being - if you think these are just like, an offshoot of giants, or an offshoot of the children the way the kingdom of ifeqevron is, then choose the children/giant/combo option, NOT the "something else" option pls and thank!!