A Thief in the Tome of Horrors
(Or Converting this Monster of a Book to 1eAD&D)
Aberrant
Frequency: Rare
No. Appearing: 2-12
Armor Class: 4
Move: 12"
Hit Dice: 8
% in Lair: 50
Treasure Type: C
No. of Attacks: 1
Damage/Attack: 2d8
Special Attacks: 1 (Thrown Object 1d10 dmg) Range 20/40/60 (To Hit +0/-1/-3)
Special Defenses: None
Magic Resistance: None
Intelligence: Low
Language: Debased Suel
Life Expectancy: 30 years (maturity age 12-14)
Size: 14 feet Tall - Extended Reach - These giant size creatures have an extended reach making it likely they can strike first against normal and small sized opponents.
Physical Appearance:
See Tome of Horrors Complete (S&W version) - Addition Description - Hair Brown or Black, Eye Color Same, Skin Color light brown to pale but normally grey or streaked with dirt.
Ecology:
Aberrants are a form of giant mutation developed after the great Suel/Bakluni war and the Rain of Colorless Fire. While often confused with Giants they are actually descended from human stock. In all respects such as what they can eat and how they breed and give birth they retain human characteristics.
Aberrant tribes will normally consist of 2-12 adult males, 3-18 adult females and 12-64 children. The men hunt and gather while the females do most of the work around the tribal dwelling. Adult females are consistent with the stats for adult males though with only 6HD on average and 1d10 damage from their attacks. Aberrant females will ferociously protect their young.
Females conceive about once per year and the infant mortality rate is about 50%. The leading cause of death for female Aberrants is childbirth.
Aberrants are extremely primitive. They build little though they do make use of cloth or hide for shelters and crude structures from the wrecks of wagons or buildings. These are extremely flimsy lean-to type structures that can be stripped down and taken with them in a few moments (mainly the cloth and rope or vines). Since most weapons and items they come across are not their size they mainly use crude clubs and stones for throwing. Occasional a human-sized sword may be found among them as a knife, but used more as a tool than a weapon.
World of Greyhawk Location:
Aberrants can be found along the hills and lower mountains circling the Sea of Dust as well as the Dry Steppes along the Sulhaut Mountains and the southern Crystalmists. They have been seen at the crux of the Jotens and the Crytsalmists at the birth of the Davish River, though not in great numbers and along the southern Jotens, the Crytsalmists and the Hellfurnaces in the Yeomanry. Sightings of Aberrants have been made in the Tors and along the arm of the Hellfurnaces as far as Hokar and as far south as the strip of land west of Jekla Bay and even where the Amedio Jungle runs against the Hellfurnaces in the far south.
Cyst Fist's Pass (Near the Hornwood - Geoff)
The trepidations of the Giants and their invasion of Sterich and Geoff shifted many a tribe and monster from their normal hunting grounds. Perhaps non-more so than Furgristle and his tribe of Aberrants forced north through the high mountains and down to the hills surrounding the embattled land of Geoff. Frost giants from the Jotens and tribes of Ogre's pushed these deformed and primitive creatures from their caves and now this small band raids through the forest of the Hornwood in preparation for the winter to come.
(See Tome of Horrors complete S&W version for the adventure hook)
Alfric watched the shaft fly true as it brought down the last of the deformed monsters. The two humans with him had feathered the giant creature with a half-dozen arrows already before it fell.
"Four..." said Oswin, a middle-aged man clad in mottled green and brown. He stood a foot taller than Alfric and pulled a longbow as big as the elf.
"The others appear to be out hunting," Alfric replied as he moved forward, another arrow nocked and ready.
The smell of roasting horseflesh was strong. Stronger even than the stink of unwashed bodies, the pile of refuse that stained the hillside and the rot of badly cured hides and decaying meat.
"Where has that little bastard gotten to?" asked Kellen, the third of their party. He was about the height of Aelfric but wide with broad shoulders and back. He'd slung his bow and drawn a long chopping sword, some type of falchion with a single-edge.
"I'm up here," cried a hushed voice high with panic. "Get me down!"
As the trio crested the hill they could see a large fire-pit and the carcase of a horse blackening on a spit above it. Nearby a tree stripped of most of its branches still held a single arm reaching out toward the fire and a crude wooden cage dangling about a dozen feet from the ground. Inside a peculiar little bird hopped about. Clad in the skin of an owl-bear a bruised and beaten halfling danced about pulling at the stout wooden bars.
"Hugh!" cried Aelfric. "How you managed to survive when the rest of those merchants ended up being eaten..."
"Those stupid giants. It was that owlbear hide," Hugh called back. "They think I'm some sort of birdman... I don't know, but they think it's funny. They'll be roasting me soon enough. Get me out of here!"
"What we need is a ladder," said Kellen.
Oswin looked from Aelfric to his blocky nephew. "You'll do," he said. "Get up on his shoulder Ael and see about cutting down our little bird."
"Make it quick! Make it quick!" Hugh chirruped. "There are a dozen more of those monsters around."
"Cut your squawking," grumbled Kellen, but up above him Aelfric went to work with haste on the vines that bound the cage together.