Kuo-toa, also known as gogglers and men-fish, are a debased, piscine race of warm-blooded and amphibious creatures. Sinister secrets lurk below the surface of their alien minds, for the kuo-toa are fanatics plagued by mental instability that sees things others couldn't and worshiped gods that didn't exist.
Kuo-toa are normally around 5 feet tall and weigh approximately 160 pounds. Contrasting with their paunchy shape are their arms and legs, slender and lithe despite their relative shortness. At the end of each limb are broad, distended and partially webbed hands and feet. Each extremity has three main digits and one opposing digit at its end. Topping their bodies are bullet-shaped, piscine heads hosting a mouthful of sharp teeth and a pair of bulging silver-black eyes capable of independently swiveling to observe a situation.
Their bodies are covered in gray scales with yellowish undertones in males, which can vary in pigmentation based on their emotional state, such as a dark red when angered and a ghostly white when terrified. Coating their rubbery skin and piscine scales is a layer of slippery slime that gives their bodies a glimmering sheen. The slime produced by their skin seems also fairly useful, partially protecting them from poisons and allowing them to wriggle free of most attempts to restrain them.
The only clothing that they wear is leather straps to hold their gear since their slime made conventional armor and leather highly uncomfortable although some don armor made of seashells. They seem to have a fondness for accessories of bone, shell, and gems. A light stench of rotten fish is constantly exuded by their bodies.
Kuo-toa are extremely suspicious, as well as duplicitous, betraying trust for their own benefit so long as they believe they could do it successfully. The mental oppression they suffered at the hands of other races broke the already-simple minds of most kuo-toa and as a result madness was a common ailment amongst their kind.
A dangerous ability the kuo-toa possess is the contagious nature of their madness. Possibly owing to their mental abilities or simply their weak wills, the initial break of a kuo-toa's mind had a 10% chance of causing other kuo-toa around them to suffer from similar episodes. Even though madness contracted this way was confined to temporary breaks in anyone but the first victim, this is still a very dangerous phenomenon. If not culled or detained quickly, the madness could swiftly infest the entire community, sending it spiraling into chaos.
While capable of biting their opponents, they more typically employed weapons like spears and shields in combat. Because of their use of slave labor, the kuo-toa commonly employed nets, harpoons, and pincer staves in order to attempt capture. They could also secrete an adhesive oil, which they applied to their shields, causing weapons that struck them to become stuck.
