Kind of made him into a “handsome” version of their communal form but still creepy enough. I really love his character in Messiah so much so I want to make him dateable. This covert warrior assassin on a mission, going to and fro the far reaches of the empire. Wise yet not an elder. Inhuman and unsettling.
The did some sketches of Bijaz and or just a Tleilaxu Master in general. Tried to take influence from Arabian sheik type stuff and hena. I wanted to create a juxtaposition that Scytale is really white, nearly albino, but dresses in black — he is the “basest” of creatures and is impure, is the means by which his masters navigate. Meanwhile the Masters dress in purest white yet have silvery dark skin to mask their secrets from advanced scanners and probing devices.
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Sometimes called the Lord of the Rings of science fiction, Frank Herbert's magnum opus, Dune, offers a number of unique and excellent ideas for even the most adamantly anti-sci-fi D&D player. The universe presented shows a depth of detail rarely seen in contemporary fiction. Everything and everyone has a history, giving the reality in which the novel's events occur the same weight of minutiae experienced when exploring a world as detailed as the FORGOTTEN REALMS.
Dune traces the path of young Paul Atreides from 15-year-old ducal heir on the water-rich planet of Caladan to his rise as a young man who becomes messiah-emperor on the desert planet Arrakis—Dune itself. Along the way, the novel packs in political intrigue, betrayal, murder, and a little philosophy. Alongside his mother, the Lady Jessica, Paul escapes into the death-dealing desert wilderness, where they come under the protection of Stilgar of the Fremen. Under the tutelage of both Jessica and Stilgar, Paul embraces and reworks the Fremen way even as Fremen culture embraces and reworks him.
Like any great adventure fiction, Dune also packs in lots of cool and imaginative concepts. Many of these ideas easily translate to D&D, from Stillsuits to Defensive Shields. Of course, the most evocative aspect of Dune is the spice called Melange and its cycle of creation and use. The following presents a way for you to use a similar cycle in your D&D game.
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🟠 ORANGESPICE 🟠
Orangespice appears as a fine orange powder that smells heavily of cinnamon.
At low doses, orangespice becomes mildly addictive;
At high doses, orangespice becomes fatally so.
Consumed over a lifetime, orangespice adds years to your life and grants you insight into the future.
Orangespice acts much like a disease and in some ways like a drug from the Book of Vile Darkness. Some creatures actively seek exposure to orangespice for its beneficial qualities, oblivious to the dangers. Others, especially those who live near areas high in orangespice, cannot help but become exposed to it, for good or ill. As long as you ingest a steady amount of orangespice in your diet, you suffer no ill effects. The following table outlines the effects of orangespice.
Frequency: This lists how often you must either consume a dose of orangespice or else make a Fortitude save. You set this frequency by the length of time between your previous 2 doses of orangespice, although you can never move higher on the chart (you cannot wean yourself off orangespice over time).
Once you've established a frequency of use, you can only maintain that frequency, increase the frequency of use, or quit orangespice altogether. If your frequency of consumption falls between 2 of the levels on the chart, use the more frequent level. For example, if you consume 2 doses of orangespice 6 months apart, your frequency becomes 1 month, and you must thereafter either consume a dose of orangespice or make a Fortitude save every month.
Spell-Like Ability (CL): This indicates which spell-like ability you gain from the spice you consume, as well as the caster level of that ability. The spell-like abilities are cumulative, so you gain all of the spell-like abilities higher on the list. You may use a particular spell-like ability once per dose you consume, and you may not use any spell-like abilities if you don't consume spice (whether or not you make your Fortitude save).
Fort DC: This is the DC of the Fortitude save you must make if you miss consuming a dose at the appropriate frequency interval.
Number of Saves: This is how many Fortitude saves you must make in a row in order to break your reliance on orangespice. If you later take a dose of orangespice after making the appropriate number of saves in a row, your frequency reverts to its previous level and you must succeed at this number of consecutive Fortitude saves to quit again.
Damage: The amount of damage you take if you fail a Fortitude save. Certain spells (such as restoration) can cure this damage normally, but no spell short of wish or miracle can prevent it from occurring.
Lifespan Increase: Orangespice grants a longer life if you're exposed to it for your entire life. Your DM adds the indicated number of years onto your maximum age when he makes your maximum age roll.
ORANGESPICE EFFECTS
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Frequency | Spell-Like Ability (CL) | Fort DC | Number of Saves | Damage | Lifespan Increase
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Year | — | 8 | 2 | 1d2 Wis | —
Month | Guidance (1st) | 16 | 3 | 1d2 Wis + 1d4 Str | 10d2 years
Week | Augury (3rd) | 24 | 4 | 1d2 Wis* + 1d4 Str + 1d6 Con | 10d6 years
Day | Divination (7th) | 32 | 5 | 2d2 Wis* + 2d4 Str* + 2d6 Con | 10d10 years
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*Permanent drain, not temporary damage.
A dose of orangespice costs 500 GP and has no appreciable weight.
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🟠 ORANGESEER 🟠
Large Monstrous Humanoid
Hit Dice: 8d8+16 (52 hp)
Initiative: +11
Speed: 20 ft (4 squares), fly 10 ft. (clumsy)
Armor Class: 20 (–1 size, –1 Dex, +4 natural, +8 dodge), touch 16, flat-footed 20
Base Attack/Grapple: +8/+12
Attack: Claw +7 melee (1d6)
Full Attack: 2 claws +5 melee (1d6)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Psionics
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 5/magic, future sight, immunities, orangespice dependence, spell resistance 19, tongues, uncanny dodge
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +8
Abilities:
STR 11 | DEX 8 | CON 15 | INT 26 | WIS 15 | CHA 14
Skills:
Concentration +13, Diplomacy +15, Gather Information +13, Intimidate +13, Knowledge (arcana) +19, Knowledge (geography) +19, Knowledge (psionics) +19, Knowledge (the planes) +19, Sense Motive +13, Spellcraft +21
Feats: Combat Casting, Improved Initiative, Spell Penetration
Environment: Any land
Organization: Solitary, band (1 Orangeseer + 4–6 1st-level warrior attendants), or guild ( 2–6 Orangeseers + 3–7 3rd-level warrior sergeants and 12–36 1st-level warrior attendants)
Challenge Rating: 7
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always lawful evil
Advancement: By character class
Level Adjustment: —
This bloated creature appears somewhat humanoid, but its arms and legs seem vestigial compared to the immense bulk of its orange-skinned body. The strong scent of cinnamon assaults your nostrils.
Their minds open to the possibilities of the future and the vast existences of the present, Orangeseers make dangerous assassins and spies. Only the wealthiest organizations can hope to maintain even one Orangeseer for long periods of time. An Orangeseer was once a humanoid who has since surrendered himself/herself to Orangespice's effects, making him/her wholly dependent on Orangespice but giving him vast powers beyond those of even daily dosage users.
An Orangeseer looks like an impossibly bloated human whose atrophied legs can no longer support it but yet somehow do. An Orangeseer weighs about 1,000 pounds.
COMBAT
In combat, an Orangeseer tries to stay out of melee, using his/her psionics to blast his/her foes. If the fight begins to go against him/her, the Orangeseer grabs what Orangespice it can and uses Dimension Door or Plane Shift to escape.
Psionics (Sp):
At will — Augury, Divination, Guidance;
3/day — Commune, Dimension Door, Touch of Idiocy;
1/day — Charm Person (DC 13), Daze Monster (DC 14), Greater Scrying (DC 19), Hold Person (DC 15), Plane Shift (DC 19), Suggestion (DC 15). Caster level 13th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
Future Sight (Su):
An Orangeseer constantly sees several possible futures simultaneous with its view of the present. This Ability grants the Orangeseer a dodge bonus to Armor Class and an Insight bonus on Initiative rolls equal to its Intelligence Modifier (usually +8).
Immunities:
The Orangeseers are immune to mind-affecting effects, disease, and poison.
Orangespice Dependence (Ex):
An Orangeseer must use Orangespice hourly. Because of its extreme reliance on Orangespice, it automatically fails all Fortitude saves related to Orangespice.
Uncanny Dodge (Ex):
An Orangeseer retains its Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) and any dodge bonuses to AC even if caught flat-footed or attacked by an invisible creature.
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🟠 SANDWORMS 🟠
You can easily introduce Sandworms into your campaign by changing a few of the abilities of a Purple Worm. Sandworms create orangespice as a natural part of their life cycle, making their preservation imperative to those who harvest or use orangespice.
Creating a Sandworm from a Purple Worm takes a few easy steps that mostly don't affect combat. First, take away the Purple Worm's poisonous sting attack. Give the worm the following Orangespice creation special quality, and increase its tremorsense range to 1 mile. Change its environment to warm desert. A Sandworm can run even when burrowing, but it can only burrow through sand and other loose material. Reduce its CR by 1. Finally, change the worm's advancement line to 16-32 HD (Gargantuan); 33+ (Colossal).
Don't fear making your Sandworm bigger. The statistics given on page 211 of the Monster Manual represent the average Purple Worm but only an immature Sandworm. Sandworms average about 300 feet long, 20 feet in diameter, and about 80 tons. Some deep desert dwellers claim to have spotted Sandworms of around 1,000 feet long, and their legends tell of Sandworms approaching a 3rd of a mile in length.
Orangespice Creation (Ex):
A Sandworm produces 1 pound per HD of Orangespice once per week. It leaves Orangespice in its wake wherever it travels. Patches of Orangespice occasionally work their way to the surface where they are easily harvested.
no parents: the seemingly paradoxical potential of a eusocial individual
(a rant about biology, philosophy, and various fictional societies from scifi settings)
first things first: when i talk about eusociality i mean it in the core biological sense of the word; it's a reproductive strategy. it's fundamentally about polymorphism within a single species, and the smallest of distinctions necessary is the distinction between reproductive and non-reproductive castes. the "ant queen". the "queen" is not a ruler; it's an egg-laying machine. the queen of a naked molerat burrow-complex holds no more inherent authority over "her" offspring than any other rodent matriarch would. each molerat is an individual. each ant, each termite, each bee, each sponge-symbiote shrimp.
the point im trying to emphasise is that im not talking about hiveminds here!!!
good? good.
^an indidual
now with that out of the way:
-PART ONE: HUMAN APPROXIMATIONS
so, first of, examples of fictional societies of *humans* who switched their mode of reproduction to something akin or close to the eusocial "worker, queen, drone" template, though again, not all pieces are needed to "count"
1a: brave new world
starting off with an old scifi classic! BNW's society is interesting in just how it walks the tightrope between dystopia and utopia; to steal the term from isaac arthur, it's "post-discontent". every single individual is fully and completely human current day baseline-standards; a mortician wouldn't see a single strange thing about them. but they're all purpose *grown*. production-line wise, "our fordship be with us". it's production. no parents. all are free to do what they want. and they were made to do what they were made for. it's the culmination of a well-intentioned dream of fulfillment and efficiency.
the one factor to keep in mind is that technically speaking, *everyone* is still potentially reproductive. not in the mammalian reproduction way, but in the gene-donor for the hatcheries way. this detail does little to detract from the eusocial structure of the society.
individual-potential, there's actually very little to say! the entire thing is genuinely just shockingy *healthy* for each individual. and there are outliers! and there's also contingencies for outliers that are beneficial to said outliers. the new world does not limit. that would be cruel. and it is never cruel. the issue some of the outliers have is that it's *too* kind, in fact!
1b: tleilaxu
in contrast, the tleilaxu from the dune universe follow the structure of a eusocial organism almost to the letter. *almost*.
they're curious in how their incredible feats of society-shaping and biotechnology are all made in service to what ultimately amounts to an extreme form of fundamentalist zealotry. the culmination of the ultimate religious misogyny: "all tleilaxu women are queens", which, in the eusocial terminology, means they exist solely for reproduction.
on top of this, the majority of the tleilaxu population consists of completely sterile "face dancers" who are on the one hand still fully *people*, but simultaneously completely beholden to the orders of their masters on an instinctive level. orders given not in spoken language, but a complex inherent system of whistles and chemicals. like the pheromone trails of ants but more detailed.
and then there's the "masters". the *other* reproductive caste. they too are genetically modified to hell and back but on top of this keep simply regrowing themselves, in a twisted approximation of immortality. the ever-reborn rulers of their army of "growth tanks" and disposable face-dancer servants.
dune doesn't need aliens; given enough time to diverge, any human can become an alien.
and no individual can be an individual here. not at first at least. because there are still parents. the masters spoil the potential. they should've died long ago.
1c: krieg
yes, that krieg. from warhammer 40k. the trench WW1-larper guys. *insert shovel joke here*
but there's something there!
krieg is strange. you could argue the vita-womb born soldiers of the bombed-out shell of a hiveworld that is war-in-german are no different from say, clone troopers in star wars. except there's a massive difference under the hood; *krieg made and makes itself*. it's a society. the regiments of krieg are conscripted, sure, but they always send more than asked. they'd go out there unasked. they weren't made on order. they're a culture. a very distinct and purposeful one. and they no longer have the concept of a parent. a ruler, yes. a god too, in the great god-emperor of mankind. but each individual in the ranks of the underground cities of krieg is an individual. no parents, not an orphan.
^one of the happiest people in the imperium, somehow
and an added quirk of krieg is the fact it's a eusocial outlier in an otherwise very much reproductively baseline greater imperium (give or take whatever goes on with servitors and on some forge worlds). which is something i genuinely know no other examples of in fiction (if you do let me know please!)
-PART TWO: INTRINSIC EUSOCIALITY (IT'S JUST HOMESTUCK AND VAST ERROR BUT TRUST ME ON THIS ONE)
you all knew this was coming! troll-time baby!
-2a: alternia
to understand troll reproduction i will *not* be going into quadrants; because funnily enough, interactions and relationships between individual *trolls* doesn't mean much for the complete picture. because trolls, funnily enough, occupy the same part of the "triangle" of eusocial phenotypes as the tleilaxu masters. not queens, not workers, but drones. (except troll workers are called drones because terminology is never straigth-forward!). or more accurately, 3 trolls are 1 drone, reproductively speaking.
that also explains the rampant intraspecific violence and other r-selected traits that seem out of place for a eusocial species, which are normally very good at caring for their offspring. except this does happen: to drones! because troll society is run *by drones* trolls fight and squabble and invent and the entire society and quite possibly troll sentience itself is a result of this rampant competition and sexual selection. ultra-individualists with no parents. a lusus isn't a parent, it doesn't have *expectations* beyond affection and food (though that last one can in itself be a huge issue: see spidermom and gl'golyb). but not a parent. a hive is a home. and ironically the straightforward stable ancient cruelty of alternia, though filled with mundane dread, is mercifully bereft of most existential dread. as is fitting for a society that evolved sapience in a post-scarcity environment.
almost the most individualistic eusocial society imaginable. almost.
(-2a*: beforus)
similar to alternia except in that past initial culling in the brood caverns the intraspecific violence is kept to an absolute minimu at the cost of very strong and paternalistic control. objectively a better place to live but it has a lot of issues and is arguably worse mentally for most. (beforus too has *issues*, they're just less in your face than alternia's, which is in itself part of the larger issue)
-2b: repiton
and at last, repiton my beloved outlier that does things to my perception and lives in my thinkpan rent-free, not that i ever ask rent.
repiton of the upside-down uncanny valley. the ex-post-scarcity society of eusocials keeping themselves going with mother grubs. without drones. ony trolls and almost-cloning. a species on permanent life-support. such an odd outlier, almost reminiscent of brave new world, but they got where they are from the other side of the growth tanks. the humans of brave new world could always go back to mammalian reproduction within a single generation, but the mother grubs are *gone*. it's barely eusocial at all anymore, just the remnants of it.
crumbled to the feudal ancap wasteland of desperation pretending to be freedom. the malaise of borrowed time.
end
im sorry i have no conclusion, only pent-up thoughts i wanted to share.
about brave new world and repiton as mirrors, written almost a century apart.
about krieg as the philosophically fascinating outlier it is.
about the difference between parent and lusus, and why i wish i grew up with the latter.
and about why a hivemind sucks all the interesting parts out of eusociality as a concept.
thanks to the single-digit amount of people reading all the way to the end.
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'How little you understand our masters, the Tleilaxu. The Guild and Bene Gesserit believe we produce artifacts. In reality, we produce tools and services. Anything can be a tool - poverty, war.
War is useful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. Only those who recognise the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination.
