Odlark
Image © Monte Cook Games
[The Cypher System is Monte Cook's go at making a generic RPG ruleset, like GURPS or the d20 System, and Numenera is my favorite of the settings for it. The setting is the Ninth World, which is Earth. A billion years from now. It's the Ninth because eight previous globe spanning civilizations have come and gone, leaving the vaguely medieval era civilization that the PCs come from. And with a billion years of magitech (the titular Numenera), interactions with creatures from other planets and other dimensions, natural and artificial evolution, stuff's gotten weird.
And for the purposes of this blog and my interests, there are three full hardcover bestiaries and all of them rule. I currently have a table set up with no fewer than 240 monsters from the Numenera setting on it. And am going to be pulling from that, at least once a week, until I get bored. Get ready for an invasion from the Ninth World.
I started with the odlark for a couple reasons. For one thing, it's one of the cover monsters of the original Ninth World Bestiary. For another, it's delightfully strange. D&D is full of psychic aberrations, but almost all of them are imperialist slavers of one type or another. How about some giant caterpillar monsters that just want to talk and make stuff by 3D printing sourdough starter? Like Numenera in general, it's clearly taking inspiration from 50 years of tabletop RPG tropes and putting a New Weird spin on them.]
Odlark CR 8 LN Aberration This creature resembles a caterpillar the size of a horse, with two dozen small limbs along its length. Its is wearing a translucent organic cowl or helmet over its large pink head, but its large eyes with horizontal pupils and wide mouth are both visible. The smell of ale hangs over its gear.
Odlarks are strange alien creatures that are more interested in discussion and exploration than violence. Their technology is centered around “grup”, an organic material produced by specialized nanites. Each odlark has a prized grup vat, which it uses to produce food, gear and construction material. In order to “learn” how to make an item, a grup vat needs to be either fed multiple examples of an item, which are broken down and analyzed, or be injected with a small amount of grup from a vat that already can make that item. Anything produced from a grup vat is translucent, has a slightly melted appearance, and emits an aroma of ale. Odlarks are happy to trade their grup-made items with other creatures, especially in order to obtain magic items.
Most odlarks would rather talk than fight, but they are skilled at defending themselves. The strong jaws of an odlark can inflict a nasty bite, but odlarks consider biting other sapient life to be gauche. Instead, they use weapons, particularly those that double as tools such as axes and hammers. They wield these not with their parapods, which are better suited to climbing than fine manipulation, but with telekinesis. They can also hone their telekinetic fields into bolts of deadly force or assault the minds of their foes. An odlark will typically flee before fighting to the death, unless it is defending its home or its grup vat.
Odlarks know that their strange appearance causes alarm in many humanoid creatures, and tend towards caution around strangers for fear that they will react violently. That said, a friendship made with an odlark can be a friendship for life, and odlarks live a long time (two to three hundred years on average). Odlarks are philosophical in outlook and tend to aggregate with others who share their particular philosophy, odlark or not. Odlarks love a spirited debate, and most have strong opinions on history, myth and religion, politics and magical theory. They are inveterate explorers, and use their psychic powers to fly to out of the way places and survive hostile conditions.
