Otyugh
The otyugh is a weird-looking scavenger, sometimes called a trash eater or a sewer beast.
Appearance
The otyugh has a bizarre anatomy: its large central body is mostly mouth, with three stumpy legs and three tentacles—two with barbs, and one with numerous eyes.Ecology
Their origin is unknown, but they are believed to be natural creatures rather than the result of a magical experiment. One theory is that they may be related to crocodiles. They can be found in both swamps and sewers; presumably they originated in swamps, but later discovered sewers to be a great source of food. They live on garbage in sewers, or on rotting plants and animals in the swamp. Few creatures can stomach eating an otyugh, so numbers are usually determined by the amount of food available. Courtship between otyughs takes about a month, with both parties offering more and more choice morsels of food. If the two otyughs are agreeable, at the end of this time, they agree to mate, and each gives half of its "trophies" to the other. They generally mate for life, but continue to maintain separate lairs. A female carries the young internally for approximately 30 days, after which they are carried in a pouch on her back. They eat the mother's blood for six months, until she expels them. Their teeth do not grow for another month, so during this time the parents chew the food for them. After a year, the young leave in search of lairs of their own. They are fully grown after five years, and begin to look for mates of their own.Habitat and society
Otyughs are not very intelligent, but they are not mere animals. They can speak the Common tongue, and also communicate with each other via scents. However, they prefer to live alone, in a lair next to their feeding grounds. An otyugh stores in its lair all the "treasures" it has acquired when rooting through garbage. At irregular intervals, such as when there is a threat to their environment, an elder otyugh will give off a particularly acrid scent, which the other otyughs recognise as a call for a moot. The otyughs gather together in response to this, and each tries to out-shout the others to get its opinions heard. On rare occasions, a leader is elected to deal with the crisis. The moot can also be a chance for otyughs to resolve individual differences. The interested parties are each given an object to hold, and then the combatants flail and slam into each other. The last otyugh to retain possession of his object is the winner.Abilities
Otyughs have tough skin and large teeth. They can also reach foes up to fifteen feet away using their tentacles. Their bite transmits the dangerous filth fever. They can also be hard to spot in their lairs, as they can lie submerged with only their eye tentacle above the water.
Comments