Gnorri

As in the waking world, the oceans of the Dreamlands are places of beauty and mystery to those who dwell upon their shores or ply their waves. Also as in the waking world, the oceans can be as perilous as they are breathtaking. Terrific storms, churning vortices, crushing pressures, dangerous animals, and the threat of horrific sea monsters populate frightful tales told of the sea. These last, perhaps above all else, inspire endless terror in the imagination of many, and the gnorri fulfill their dread promise. It should come as no surprise to learn that many sailors and coastal dwellers view the gnorri with a mixture of fear, loathing, and hatred, for here are creatures that ape the trappings of humanity but are little like humanoids at all. Their strange-colored skin, mutable number of arms, and tentacle-like lower bodies seem designed by a malevolence bent on evoking many of humanity’s deepest fears. The gnorri lurk in the lightless depths of unplumbed ocean trenches and shadowed reefs, mysterious and alien to those who breathe air and abide upon the land.
Yet not all that dwells beneath the waves is malevolent. While there are those among the gnorri who harbor sadism and cruelty in their hearts, this is no different than any sentient race; on the whole the gnorri are more interested in trading than warring with land dwellers. Indeed, in certain ports, the initial fear and suspicion of the gnorri has given way to respect and a kind of cooperation. Today the gnorri are valued as trade partners and scouts, plying their extensiveknowledge of the sea and its hazards as guides. Their skill with alchemy and surgerymakes an alliance with the gnorri very valuable to surface dwellers. (see Culture for more details)

History

The oceans of the Dreamlands have been the home of gnorri enclaves as long as humanoids have dreamed. Since the first dreamers sought to sail those cerulean waters, they have spotted strange bearded faces peering up from below and wondered. The gnorri are unusual among many cultures in that they are not particularly interested in where they come from or, indeed, where they’re going. To the gnorri, it is enough to believe that they have always existed, and thus they are comforted in the knowledge that they will always exist. Certainly, their coral cities and grottos often have the appearance of great age, indicating that their presence in the sea has lasted much longer than humanity’s presence on land.
Certain rare texts suggest that the first gnorri existed before humanity grew to understand the peculiarities of dreams. Indeed, the first tribes of coastal-dwelling societies understood and feared the ocean, and in their troubled dreams imagined ways of surviving in the depths. Over the course of eons, these primitive humanoids learned to build boats and sail. In so doing, they lost their waking fear of the sea, and their awed aquatic dreams acquired lives as the gnorri. Or at least so the texts suggest. Of course, those who suggest such a genesis to a gnorri will likely be laughed at or attacked for the insult. For the gnorri, it is their own nightmares of being stranded on land that gave birth to life on the surface above.

Playing a Gnorri

Gnorri are driven by individual accomplishment and seek greater success in their fields of interest. This leads some gnorri to want to explore lands above and beyond their aquatic homes. Gnorri are as capable of living on land as they are in the ocean and can even survive in desert climates (though they will find it just as difficult as most humanoid races). Most gnorri find being “tied down” to the land disturbing. The ocean is a three-dimensional existence; on land, only creatures that can fly can experience a “normal” state of being. Given gnorri cannot fly through the air as they might through the water, it can be an adjustment to “always live on the bottom” (which is what it feels like to a gnorri).

If you’re a Gnorri, you likely...

• are curious about surface dwellers, but you have trouble telling them apart and are disturbed by how rigid and unchanging their bodies are. • value your friends for their diversity and differences rather than any similarities they might have to you. • have several close friends (gnorri or otherwise) but do not have a concept of family; you do not know your parents, siblings, or children and have no need to know them. • understand that there are many dangers in the sea, but your appreciation of the beauty of the ocean depths and its denizens cannot be tainted by its perils.

Others Probably...

• fear you’re a sea monster who means to drag them below the waves to drown. • assume you’re a primitive since you prefer to use tools of bone or stone. • mask their jealousy of your ability to breathe water with insults or fear. • want you to help them deal with something underwater, such as recovering a bit of sunken treasure or finding good fishing. • can’t tell your gender and may not know that there are three common sexes of gnorri.

Physiology

Gnorri appear vaguely humanoid from the torso up, yet the more one learns about how gnorri bodies work, the more their humanoid appearance seems like a coincidence. Gnorri have a chiseled body like that of a humanoid above the waist and a tentacular lower trunk. Some gnorri even have suction cups along their tails, but this is uncommon. Above water, gnorri exude a thin layer of glistening slime that keeps them looking freshly emerged from the sea. Gnorri’s fingers are webbed to aid in swimming but they can absorb this webbing partially into their flesh when they wish to wear rings or gloves. What appears to be hair on a gnorri’s head is actually a forest of thin tendrils more akin to the undercarriage of a jellyfish than anything else. All gnorri possess this fringe of tendrils along the chin and sides of the face, giving them their distinctive “bearded” look. These tendrils function like gills, converting water to air for their lungs. When the gnorri head is fully dry, such as after a long period in a dry environment, its hair-like tendrils fall off along with any fins they may have. A gnorri missing their “beard” and “hair” can drown in water. Fortunately for such gnorri, these tendrils swiftly regrow when the face or body is exposed to water, re-emerging over the course of 2d4 minutes. If a gnorri is drowning, they can retreat above the waves to breathe air.
One of the most unusual features of gnorri physiology is the eerie mutability of their flesh and bones. While the basic gnorri shape remains solid and fixed, upon close examination, one can watch their scales slither and slide slowly over their body or the ridges and wrinkles of their tentacles shift and change. This fleshy fluidity is even greater inside, with entire organs “swimming” within their bodies, severing and re-attaching connections seemingly at random. At one moment, the heart may be situated within the chest, but in another it may descend into the belly to be embraced by the entrails while the liver slithers up into the chest to nuzzle against the air bladder or lung. This trait not only allows gnorri to withstand sudden trauma to their bodies, but more amazingly, it allows them to grow or retract limbs. By concentrating, gnorri can extrude additional arms or withdraw them back into their bodies by reallocating flesh, muscle, and bone. The process takes ten minutes or so and is so exhausting gnorri cannot change the number of their arms more than once per day. Technically, gnorri could have one or no arms, but they gain no significant advantage from such a change. Gnorri cannot extrude more than four arms at once and rarely even create that many unless they wish to wield multiple weapons. This process does not change a gnorri’s mass; while gnorri have three or four arms, their bodies are weakened from the redistribution. Most gnorri dwell within the relatively shallow reaches of the ocean, near the coastlines at depths of a few hundred feet. In fact, strange physiologies afford them great flexibility in choosing a home. Gnorri who dwell in deeper waters often adapt to a darker and more dangerous environment, taking on stranger shapes or becoming bioluminescent, larger, or more powerful.
Those who dwell in the depths are generally more defensive and less interested in mixing with surface dwellers, and the relative scarcity of food results in a corresponding relaxation of taboos against such acts as feeding on sentient races or, in the most extreme cases, cannibalism. Gnorri have three sexes: female, male, and builder. The females produce eggs, males fertilize them, and builders are responsible for the creation of the grottos that gnorri live in. None of these is held at any greater or lesser esteem than the others, for Gnorri judge individuals strictly by their merits.

Family

Gnorri are confused by many things that surface dwellers take for granted, but the concept of family may well be the most alien to their kind. While gnorri value companionship and engage in something akin to sexual relationships with favored partners, such actions are not linked to the act of perpetuating the species (see below for details). In any event, as a result of their unusual “childhoods,” no gnorri knows or much cares about the identity of its parents or how many siblings it might have, and a gnorri rarely desires to know its children. Gnorri are capable of forming friendships, and these can last for entire lifetimes in some cases, but the concept of familial attachment is a curiosity at best to the gnorri.

Society

Family ties are not the only surface-creature “tradition” that is lost upon the gnorri. Because they have no concept of heredity or birthright, no true aristocracy exists among the gnorri. In a gnorri settlement, accomplishments establish merit and worthiness, rather than bloodline or pedigree. As gnorri age, they seek greater accomplishments, and as a result, leaders among the gnorri tend to be older. In the sad case of those gnorri whose age outstrips their accomplishments, exile may be a preferable fate to constant ridicule or pity from the mouths of their younger, more accomplished fellows. Gnorri do not build complex cities, but settlements can grow quite large in size. They tend to live in tune with their environments, using nearby materials for construction, particularly coral. Gnorri coral shapers are masters at guiding the growth of coral through diverse methods, ranging from physical carving to alchemical enhancement. Builders usually favor naturally-occurring caverns or rifts along the cave floor in sheltering a gnorri settlement, but in most cases, they wed such natural features to crafted palaces. Bones are also a valued building material for weapons and buildings alike. When a great sea beast dies, gnorri are quick to strip the body of its flesh and harvest the bones to serve once more as a skeleton, this time as the superstructure for an undersea building.
While gnorri are omnivorous, they generally prefer lives as vegetarians, for their teeth are not sharp and have difficulty chewing through flesh. This is, of course, a strange disconnect for very young gnorri, who in their plankton stage are dedicated carnivores who feed only on flesh. Gnorri keep large farms of kelp and other seaweeds, but also raise slow-moving slug-like creatures or pens of jellyfish as livestock. These creatures also provide key resources for gnorri alchemists (see Culture below).

Faith

Some societies of gnorri are particularly wise, and with that wisdom comes an intrinsic understanding that they are not the center of the world. Gnorri are rarely solipsistic and easily accept that there exist truths out in the world greater than themselves. Gnorri don’t have a specific god or pantheon they worship, nor do they recognize creator or paternal deities, as they have no concept of family. Gnorri believe that nature, in all its diversity and wonder, is sufficient unto itself in terms of eliciting the intellectual and emotional responses associated with spiritual experience, and that there is no need for faith in anthropomorphic deities or animistic spirits. The gnorri recognize the existence of ghosts, spirits, and other things that “prove” that there is life after death, but they have no concern about these or any introspection on what happens to individuals after they’ve died. They have a “does it matter” perspective on what happens after life ends. Nor do they believe in any sort of apocalypse: nature has always existed and will always exist and so it is with the gnorri.

The gnorri respect nature; they do not revere it. While they work in harmony with nature, they don’t avoid manipulating the world around them to suit their community’s needs. An example of this is how they use their innate magical ability to turn rock into mud to make grottos. As a society, gnorri don’t build places of worship within their communities. They see no need to. Those who wish to harness the power of nature are often called to a druidic lifestyle. While recognized as druids by folk who dwell on the land, gnorri do not view themselves as part of a religion or sect. Gnorri feel no great connection or comradeship with druids of the land, and will not hold them to any particular religious expectations or give them any special treatment. Gnorri druids do gather in groups, not to worship but to learn from one another. They recognize that some teachings can lead to great power. To protect this power and to trade learning with land druids, gnorri druids have adopted the secret Druidic language—a special dialect seen in the growth of coral and heard in the flow of the wave—though they rarely use the language amongst themselves.
Other gnorri servants of divine powers are relatively rare and tend to view their relationship with the divine in a transactional light. Gnorri paladins focused on ideals and virtues often find collaboration with deities useful, but rarely would they call their relationship one of worship. Very rarely will a gnorri become a cleric, as most of their kind cannot comprehend the attraction of worshiping a god and may see such a faith as a sign of madness. While not outcasts, clerics and other gnorri that follow a god or pantheon operate outside the grottos that house gnorri communities, as there is literally no place within the cities of the gnorri for them to gather and worship.

Culture

The gnorri live relatively simple lives, despite the size of their societies. Without family concerns and with merit in society determined by personal accomplishment, each gnorri swiftly settles into a chosen specialty without the expectations and pressures of raising more gnorri. This allows an individual gnorri to strive their best to ensure greater personal prestige while simultaneously bolstering the society as a whole. Although the gnorri aren’t particularly interested in the origin of their species, they value other aspects of their history and culture, along with science. They are far from a primitive society, but their underwater environs have resulted in their written language following a different path from those of surface dwellers. Traditional gnorri writings are carved on stone surfaces or tablets using metal tools scavenged or traded from surface folk or magical methods of inscription. As their culture has grown, other, less cumbersome and less expensive methods of writing have developed. Gnorri invented a method of preserving kelp in parchment-like strips and pioneered the use of alchemically treated urchin spines as writing styluses that bleach the text onto the kelp. This method of kelp writing has an advantage over paper and ink in that it remains viable both above and below water. Traditional gnorri building methods utilize magic and integrate nature and terrain. A gnorri group looking to establish a town is more likely to pick as the site of their new home a craggy section of underwater rifts and caverns, rather than an open expanse of lush seaweed plains. This gives the gnorri additional defenses against sea monsters and other dangerous denizens of the deep. Without the ready ability to manufacture metal, glass, and pottery under water, gnorri who desire these items must rely on trade with the surface. Fortunately for the gnorri, two of their cultural specialties are very much in demand from surface dwellers: alchemy and surgery. Rather than focusing on potions and fluids, which are difficult to contain and manage in an aquatic environment, gnorri alchemists focus on thicker, more solid media, such as oozes, plant life, and small animals. A gnorri alchemist uses a collection of venomous crustaceans, a wide array of aquatic plants, and flesh harvested from a wide range of invertebrate creatures for a diverse and versatile take on alchemy. Eating a tiny preserved anemone might function as a healing potion, for instance, or else deliver a deadly dose of jellyfish venom hidden inside. This work has made gnorri particularly adept in the crafting of poisons, as much of their work involves using and repurposing venoms extracted from their living tools. The gnorri’s deep knowledge of biology aids them in larger healing projects involving more complex organisms as well, and gnorri surgeons are among the most gifted under and above the waves alike. While almost all gnorri display a talent for minor applications of first aid and other forms of healing, some among their number have taken this science even further, with the ability to graft flesh and transform subjects using a wide variety of methods. While it’s easier for them to perform these flesh-altering procedures on fellow gnorri, those who specialize in operating on surface dwellers find their talents in high demand. Gnorri surgeons can earn their communities a huge haul of glass and metal tools by performing a single operation to graft gills onto a human pearl diver or a seaside merchant, for example.

Relations

Gnorri enjoy the beauty of their aquatic regions and have, as a general rule, a productive relationship with local civilizations built on deep understanding. Many undersea cultures are isolationist at best and violent at worst. By contrast, a typical gnorri settlement maintains good terms with neighboring gnorri towns for mutual protection. Beyond that, things start to break down, as communities grow more different the farther apart they lie. With populations that embrace the dual concept of specialization and supporting the community as a whole, gnorri communities have traditionally not depended much on extensive trade or support networks with their aquatic neighbors. They prefer to maintain a respectful distance, neither community relying on the other. Nevertheless, there are many things that gnorri cannot build or acquire with ease underwater. Scavenging for items from shipwrecks is a long tradition, but unless gnorri specifically target trade ships and sink them for goods, it’s impossible to depend on sunken salvage as a constant resource. Since the gnorri are, as a whole, loath to prey upon the ships that sail above, they have turned to more peaceful options, such as trade, which requires setting aside long-standing superstitions and fears about the surface world. Trade presents significant hurdles for the gnorri, not the least of which is their natural difficulty interacting with air-breathing creatures. Most trade groups employ at least one diplomat to serve as a translator, as well as an ambassador to help handle confusing differences in culture, but this goes only so far.
For example, for most gnorri, telling one humanoid apart from another is a constant struggle. A group of gnorri whose first contact with air-breathing creatures happens to be with centaurs might assume all air breathers have four legs, or they might view humans and horses as “half-centaurs,” perhaps separated from their other half by a cataclysmic magical curse or wound.

The concept of legs is endlessly fascinating to the gnorri and somewhat disturbing. It is as strange and unsettling for a gnorri to see a humanoid walk by putting one foot in front of the other as it might be for a human to watch a gnorri’s tail slither out in front of their upper body like a snake. Gnorri are baffled and at times disgusted by the rhythmic “sawing” of legs moving back and forth, bending only at the knee and ankle but otherwise rigid. This is a trait that many gnorri can’t help but associate with the infirmities of age.

Adventurers

To the gnorri, the single greatest drive for adventure is curiosity. Particularly, they long to learn about those who dwell above the waves. However wondrous it might seem to surface-dwellers, the underwater world seems mundane to gnorri who have lived all their lives there. While a gnorri character can be a significant boon to a group needing to travel underwater, to a gnorri such excursions are often dull. As a result, the vast majority of gnorri adventurers seek out surface parties in order that they might accompany them on their escapades and quests above the waves. With their amphibious nature, it is often easier for gnorri to adventure on the surface than for their mundane companions to travel under water. The gnorri’s focus on specialization means that most pick a single class and stick to it for an entire career. Only unusually does a gnorri multiclass, and those who do pursue such paths tend to do so out of a sense of wanderlust. To many gnorri, this lack of focus is doubly troubling: not only do such gnorri abandon their homes to travel with surface dwellers, but they also lack the focus to master a chosen field. Such unfocused gnorri are often not welcomed back into their homes, and such a gnorri’s outsider companions ironically find themselves more welcome than the gnorri.

Gnorri Traits

• Your gnorri character has an alien physique that gives you a number of benefits. You are a monstrosity, not a humanoid, so spells that specifically target humanoids (such as charm person) fail to target you. 
• Age. A gnorri reaches adulthood before 7 years of age but can live for centuries, eventually declining rapidly into a paralyzed death shortly after age 500.
• Alignment. Gnorri are, as a rule, extremely practical, evaluating each circumstance on its own and not committing to a fixed moral or ethical framework. Neither, however, do they actively flout structure or authority. They tend to be neutral.
• Ability Score Increase. You gain a +2/+1 to two stats.
• Size. Gnorri range from 8 to 13 feet long and weigh from 250 to 1,500 pounds. Your size is Large.
• Speed. Your base speed is 25 feet. In addition, your long tail gives you a swimming speed of 35 feet. You don’t need to spend extra movement to swim.
• Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray. Underwater, this radius increases to 120 feet.
• Amorphous Physiology. You can move through spaces as narrow as 5 feet wide without squeezing. You can squeeze through spaces as narrow as 2 feet wide. In addition, you can’t be harmed by water pressure.
• Amphibious. You can breathe air and water.
• Gnorri Science. You have proficiency in your choice of the Medicine skill or the Nature skill. You also have proficiency with one of your choice from the following tools: alchemist’s supplies, herbalism kit, or poisoner’s kit.
• Gnorri Equipment. A gnorri’s arms aren’t much larger than a Medium creature’s. As a result, you use weapons as if you were Medium, rather than Large. Your lack of legs prevents using items designed to be worn on legs or feet.
• Limb Allocation. You can absorb or extrude your arms, although the process is somewhat painful and slow, and can only be performed once per day. You must concentrate for 10 minutes to adjust the number of arms you have, as if concentrating on a spell. If your concentration is disrupted, you must begin the process of limb allocation from the beginning, but you don’t lose your daily usage of this trait.
• Two Arms: If you elect to have two arms, you can concentrate more of your muscle mass in those limbs and as a result, you get a +1 bonus on your Strength-based weapon damage rolls.
• Three Arms: If you elect to have three arms, you must allocate your muscle mass more evenly and gain no bonus or penalty.
• Four Arms: If you elect to have four arms, you must allocate additional muscle mass, flesh, bone, nerves, and circulatory system reserves to the fourth arm. You gain no bonus and take a –1 penalty to Constitution saving throws as a result of overburdening your body.
• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Gnorri. The Gnorri language uses an alphabet composed primarily of dots and straight cuts rather than curves since it’s easier to inscribe dots and slashes with chisels in stone or spines in seaweed.