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Horror Rules / Horror Characters / Fleshwarping

True Fleshwarping

Source Horror Adventures pg. 164
Willfully transforming one creature into another through magical and alchemical processes is a terrifying technique performed by the most cruel and vicious of creatures. Power-hungry necromancers, heartless alchemists, demon worshipers, aboleths, and the drow are some of the best-known practitioners of this foul art, using dark knowledge and secret formulas to flay the creature’s flesh and twist them into amalgamated forms.

Some sages theorize that other amalgamated creatures, such as chimeras, owlbears, and maybe even skum and bulettes, could have also been the result of an archaic form of fleshwarping. Legends involving Lamashtu’s creation of the chimera give a certain amount of credence to this theory, but even it’s true, the secrets to these early fleshwarps are long lost.

While fleshwarping often yields results useful to those depraved enough to carry it out, the act of creating a fleshwarp is always evil, as it requires unspeakable acts and horrific physiological and psychological torture inflicted upon the subject of the transformation. Unfortunately, this has not stopped the occasional alchemist or arcanist from pursuing fleshwarping for the well-meaning but ultimately deluded purposes of species genesis.

Worse still, while the rare fleshwarp formula develops a truly unique race, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. In the majority of cases, the process involves the utter corruption of sentient beings warped into lurching monstrosities that are both intellectually stunted and existentially compromised. As such, most fleshwarp creatures are sterile. The most famous fleshwarp mutation, the drider, is the chief exception to this rule. Still, the process of creating a drider is no blessing, but rather a cruel punishment perpetrated by the depraved dark elves upon their own kind. If possible, the processes drow inflict on other creatures are even crueler. This also points to another rule of fleshwarping: creatures that are inherently evil tend to take forms that are useful and powerful, while good creatures tend to metamorphose into more twisted and helpless forms. Another quirk of true fleshwarping is that targets of mixed race, such has half-elves and half-orcs, usually transform into creatures that more strongly reflect their non-human parentage. Lastly, while dwarves have proven strangely resilient to drow methods of fleshwarping, the methods of other races have successfully warped dwarves into new creatures.



Fleshwarping Process: The creation of a true fleshwarp is partly magical and partly alchemical. While a team of alchemists, spellcasters, and torturers is often assembled to perform fleshwarping, it must be led by at least one creature that has the Fleshwarper feat and must be performed on a living creature or creatures. Any attempt to fleshwarp a corpse automatically fails.

Before the process, a fleshwarper usually restrains the subject or subjects. She then must make precise cuts in a subject’s flesh and insert tubes into those incisions. These tubes connect to vats of bubbling alchemical substances, which are pumped into the subject’s body, racking it with agony. These fluids break down the subject’s corporeal form, making it more malleable. Each subject undergoing the fleshwarping process must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or instantly die from this procedure. If the fleshwarper succeeds at a DC 20 Heal check during this process, she grants the subject a +2 bonus on this saving throw.

Assuming a subject survives the fluid infusion, the fleshwarper then forces a breathing tube down the subject’s throat. Unable to speak, the subject is at best able to make strangled noises as the fleshwarper immerses it into the alchemical concoction that completes its transformation. Once immersed in the alchemical compound, the subject’s body goes through a rapid series of transformations. During this arduous process, attendants must periodically remove necrotic tissue and organs, as well as flesh that has sloughed off the creature’s body.

The entire fleshwarping process requires 1 day per Hit Die of the final fleshwarped creature. During this time, the fleshwarper must succeed at a Craft (alchemy) check with a DC equal to the creation DC of the fleshwarped creature (typically, 15 + the final fleshwarped creature’s Hit Dice) each day. Creating a fleshwarped creature takes a number of days equal to 1 + the final fleshwarped creature’s CR. The fleshwarper can’t gain the benefit of aid another nor can she take 10 on these checks. Failure indicates each subject undergoing the fleshwarping process takes 1d3 points of Constitution damage, which can’t be healed until the process is complete, and that day’s work doesn’t count toward the creation time. If a fleshwarping subject’s Constitution damage (whether from this failure or the final Constitution damage at the conclusion) ever equals or exceeds its Constitution score, its body collapses into protoplasmic goo. Creatures slain in such a fashion can’t be raised from the dead except by true resurrection or equally powerful magic, and if any of the component creatures breaks down in this way, the final fleshwarp fails.

During the entire process, the subject is racked with the agony of the change. At the conclusion of the fleshwarping process, the final creation takes 2d6 points of Constitution damage. A successful DC 25 Heal check made by an attending participant can mitigate the suffering a subject undergoes, reducing the Constitution damage to 1d6 points.

The alchemical components for fleshwarping are expensive, difficult to create, and expended after a single use. The ingredients for fleshwarping vary from one practitioner to the next, but often include corrosive fungi, poison from several breeds of giant insects, assorted pulverized oozes, essences from a chaos beast, protean spittle, and other exotic reagents. These reagents have a combined cost of 10,000 gp per subject to be fleshwarped in addition to other costs associated with specific fleshwarping procedures.

Fleshwarped Creatures

Below is a list of creatures commonly created by fleshwarping, the requirements to create them, and the sourcebooks where they are detailed. The cost listed in each entry refers to the cost beyond the base reagents. If you want to create a new fleshwarp, you can develop a new monster using the various monsters below as guidelines or choose an existing monster and apply the simple fleshwarped template.

Drider (CR 7): Cost 1,500 gp; Creation DC 24, 8 days; Creatures 1 drow with at least 6 class levels, 1 giant spider. (Bestiary 113)

Fleshdreg (CR 1): Cost 500 gp; Creation DC 17, 2 days; Creatures 1 humanoid.

Ghonhatine (CR 10): Cost 4,600 gp; Creation DC 27, 11 days; Creatures 1 troglodyte paragon or 1 troglodyte with at least 8 class levels.

Grothlut (CR 3): Cost 1,050 gp; Creation DC 20, 4 days; Creatures 1 human.

Halsora (CR 7): Cost 1,475 gp; Creation DC 25, 8 days; Creatures 1 vegepygmy chieftain.

Irnakurse (CR 9): Cost 3,500 gp; Creation DC 25, 10 days; Creatures 1 elf with at least 8 class levels.

Sinspawn (CR 2): Cost 1,000 gp; Creation DC 18, 3 days; Creatures 1 human.