The Aboleth!!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Well, when the party goes on expeditions deep into the earth, it is often fun and interesting to develop plots, and strange cities with Aboleth involved. These are weird, giant amphibious creatures, Lawful Evil, that have great magical and psionic power (optional)--that live in deep lakes and subterranean seas.

How do you use them in your campaigns? Have they been prominent? Do you like using them? What things do you like about them, and what things do you not like about them?

Just wondering.

I have always liked them, though. They always have a cool alien-like culture and feel to them. Plus, they're effing vicious, powerful, and they usually have excellent treasure to come up with, so the players won't whine when they struggle to finally kill the damned things, and get some kind of cool treasure as a reward for all of their suffering!!!!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[DMH]

I love aboleth, I just wish there was more about skum and grafts in LOM. When I use them, they are the greatest danger to humans (things like dragons and outsiders aren't used). With their mind control powers I give them all kinds of servants, including deepspawn and phasms as well as skum, skoth and oxheph (Template Troves I).

 

[Ry]

Although the best ideas about the aboleth are Mouseferatu's, here's my OGC Aboleth ideas (posted earlier):

Aboleths are Huge fishlike amphibians. They alter and dominate their victims, and they frequently appear with Skum.

The Skum


Skum can be encountered in separate packs in the "wild." Aboleths, however are clearly the masterminds, and the Skum are their thralls. While some Skum get away from their masters and "go wild", skum as a race independent of the aboleths are largely inconsequential. Whether Skum were originally their own amphibious race or were created by the aboleths is debatable, but again, inconsequential.

Reproduction


As fishlike amphibians, Aboleths give birth to a bunch of Small-sized tadpoles. These proto-aboleths display surprising resilience and appear to have the ability to engage in parasitic relationships with other aquatic humanoids.

The Foul Transformation


Aboleths can dominate their captives, but only for short periods. Even a 1st-level Commoner will eventually make a DC 17 Will save, and an aboleth cannot assume that their operatives will be able to return to their watery lair every 24 hours. As aboleths are the masterminds behind other terrible plots, they sometimes need longer-term operatives within the lands of their enemies.

Through a disgusting process that requires a three-day ritual, Aboleths can make a permanent imprint on the psyche of a properly prepared victim. The victim must have at least an Intelligence score of 12, a Fortitude save of +3 or higher, and a Will save no higher than +8. The victim, who is already dominated and afflicted by the aboleth's mucus attack, is taken up inside the aboleth's body, which provides all necessary circulatory functions for the victim for the entire period of the transformation. Three days later, the victim, whose psyche is now completely destroyed, is "birthed" from the aboleth. The dominate effect, in this case, is now permanent. If the dominate effect is dispelled the victim is affected as if under the effect of a permanent feeblemind spell with a caster level 4 higher than the original aboleth.

If the aboleth is killed during this period the victim is ejected at the aboleth's death, but acts as if they were still dominated. They fight with all their resources to destroy the aboleth's killers, and will desperately seek to ressurect the aboleth through any means. This effect wears off after 24 hours, plus 8 hours per day inside the aboleth.

Dopplegangers are aboleths favored victims for this process, and aboleths will join forces with each other or other aberrations if an opportunity to capture a doppleganger community presents itself. Dopplegangers who are victims of this transformation become Cannibal Dopplegangers; they are so subsumed by the Aboleth's personality that they must consume their victim's bodies before they can take on their forms.

Uargleth


Even the wicked aboleth have members so tainted and evil that they turn on their own kind; aboleths who discover such a traitor use their psionics and transformative powers to mutate the offender into a landbound horror with only a shadow of its former powers. These horrors are known as Uargleth.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Sadly, I have never gotten the opportunity to use one - but that is not by choice. I have always felt they would make excellent masterminds of evil, especially if you are going for some kind of Lovecraftian feel for a campaign or adventure.

 

[Imruphel]

My first 3E campaign was largely inspired by 2E's Night Below boxed set so aboleth were fairly prevalent. My fifth 3E (and second 3.5E) campaign also involved aboleth albeit in a smaller role where an aboleth encountered when the party was 3rd level subsequently reappeared when the party hit 20th level and they realised how they had been manipulated by the aboleth all along!

It seems I can't run a campaign without including aboleth. They're simply one of my favourite creatures as they can fill a number of roles.

 

[skippy_the_witch]

First off, I make the aboleth masters of psionics, even more so than the mind-flayers. Since I run a VERY different homebrew, being a psuedo-post apocalyptic technomagic campaign, the aboleth of the current time are usually found in ruins in the deepest of the Taint Lands (think 1950's SF radioactive wasteland, or Eberron's Mournlands). In the Golden Age, before the apocalypse, the Aboleths had convinced the rest of the world (a highly advanced technomagic society -- think Star Wars based on technomagic) that they were extinct. In actuality, they were the hidden masters of the narcotics trade throughout the world, and most of the "modern" research into better understanding and enhancing psionics of the time was probably financed indirectly by them. Even after the apocalypse, a group of aboleths was able to protect a small remote jungle mesa of their modified naturally psionic human followers (think Eberron Kalashtar, but being completely ignorant of there true masters), psionic gnolls, and blues. These are the ONLY non-insectoid group of psionically active people on the Cursed Earth. Since psionics is the ONLY "magic" that is immune to being changed/altered/mutated by the Shadow and it's Taint (Rokugan/Heroes of Horror), they could be one of the answers to eventually cleansing the Cursed Earth of the Taint.

skippy The GM of the Cursed Eath

 

[paradox42]

My homebrew features over 200,000 years of prior history before the present day, and among other things I postulated that waaaay back at the beginning of the world the Creator Gods made three sapient races to start it all. Elves were the end result of primate evolution, dragons came out of dinosaurs, and the aboleths evolved from something unknown in the seas. These three races eventually gave rise to every other race the setting featured before the relatively recent catastrophe that makes my setting post-apocalyptic (and after which I have lots of mutant animals rising to fill various niches, such as the Tabaxi and Thri-Kreen). My world backstory postulates that during the same war when Drow were split from the original Elf culture, and the split between Chromatic and Metallic dragons occurred, the aboleths too split down alignment lines. The evil side won the seas, so the good side were forced to adapt to land life- and did so by using their psionic and biological powers to permanently alter themselves into illithid form. Eventually the evil side figured out how they did it, and sent up a race of evil illithids- the Mind Flayers- after them.

So, my illithids are direct descendants of the aboleths- somewhat like Mouseferatu suggested after Lords of Madness in that thread rycanada linked to- and I even give them three eyes because of that ancestry. The third one- in the middle of the forehead- has both Low-Light and Darkvision in 3E (in previous editions it had both Infra- and Ultravision), and as such it's exquisitely sensitive to visible light and usually kept tightly closed when other races are around so that the illithids look basically humanoid as they usually do. This means that I altered the physiology of illithids considerably from canon after the Illithiad hit the scene- my world's illithids don't spawn using the Ceremorphosis process, and the actual Mind Flayers aren't nutritionally required to eat brain matter- they're just addicted to it (I even came up with mechanics for "withdrawal" if one of them tries to "go sober"). It also means there's a race of non-evil illithids running around, which I've had several players make characters from in my 3E games. I even have one in each of my currently running games now.

Actual aboleths still fill a similar niche in my setting as they do in D&D canon- they're aquatic slavemasters and use their alien minds and psionics to hatch plots of dizzying complexity when they're so inclined. The thing I don't have is the idea that they came from the Far Realm originally, though I do have history that most of the race was banished to the Far Realm for about 100 millennia and only recently (about 2000 years ago) was re-released to the Material Plane. So the Far Realm tie is very much there in the view of modern inhabitants of the world, most of whom are unaware that aboleths were ever natives.

So... yes, I use aboleths a bit.

 

[der_kluge]

I completely F'd up my party once with an Aboleth encounter in a submerged dungeon. In melee, these things are vicious. I also had them encounter a pair of Moray Eels from ToH beforehand, which inflict a mummy-rot like disease.

I think ever one of the party members was diseased in some form or fashion afterwards.

 

[Ace]

Never used them. No one in their right mind would go deep underground as it is worse than as the surface which is insanely dangerous.

 

[frankthedm]

IMC aboleth are pretty close to the LoM material, though they enslave or barter servitude from Deep Ones more often than they make actual Skum. Though most of their foes don't care about the subtle differences of the various types of fishmen.