An Alternate Ecology of the Slaadi
The slaadi. Chaos and violence incarnate. Random. Purposeless. Or are they?
Batrachian humanoids hailing from Limbo, they reproduce in many odd fashions. One of them is by infecting other beings with a disease called the chaos phage, that reshapes them into a new slaad. Another is injecting eggs that eat the host from within, again forming a new slaad. Still another, spontaneous birth from the Spawning Stone at the center of Limbo, or from Limbo itself.
Some believe that the frog or toadlike aberrations are descended from the ancient Batrachi progenitor race of Faerun. Others, that they are products of Limbo and its limitless chaos, and nothing more.
It is said that without the normalizing influence of the Spawning Stone, which might have been made by the slaad lord Ygorl or, weirdly, by the modron lord Primus, that the slaadi have no fixed form.
The few slaad lords known support this notion. Ygorl, supposedly second amongst them, is at turns a bat-winged shadow of a skeleton, a nearly human warrior, or a shadow-cloaked massive slaad shaped like the others. The most ancient, Ssendam, lord of Insanity, could appear as a golden slaad...or a golden, translucent amoeba with many pseudopods and a visible brain as its nucleus. Bazim Gorag, the Firebringer, was two headed. There are , of course, more, for Limbo is limitless.
Whatever is said, it is known that the slaadi spread chaos and destruction wherever they go. Except when they don't. They are truly unpredictable. They embody chaos. And their leaders, at least some, like Bazim-Gorag and the death slaadi, are as evil as they are chaotic. To mortal eyes, the sheer chaos of their being has little choice but to appear evil, as the consequences of their actions, that they care nothing for, hurt so very many.
But what are they, really? And why do they exist? What is their purpose? Why, if they are native to Limbo, are they aberrations rather than something else?
Long time readers may have some idea where I'm going with this.
Come along.
A digression, but only sort of. In ancient Egyptian myth, the primal chaos gave birth to eight figures, often depicted with the heads of frogs and/or serpents. All 8, called the Ogdoad, were primordial gods, not worshiped as such, but predating formal creation. One of them, Nun, was the formless 'waters' of pre-creation personified. Others were darkness, night or inaction, and infinity itself.
Amongst the Mexica people of Mesoamerica, the goddess Tlaltecuhtli , from whom the earth was made, (much as the Mesopotamians claimed it was made from Tiamat), was depicted as a toad like figure. She, too, represented primal chaos.
In Hindu folklore, frogs are associated with transformation and rebirth, possibly because of their lifecycle.
Eternity. Change. Chaos. That Which Was Before Things Were.
I posit the following possibility. Like the aboleth, the illithid, the beholder, slaadi are products of the Far Realm. That place that is not place, that has no time, no structure. That is the future beyond the end and the past before the beginning, and still exists, if such a thing can be said, Outside creation. Like all aberrations, they are manifestations of the truly primal Khaos, before it even became ordered enough to be termed Limbo, or the Elemental Chaos, or the Great Maelstrom. I remind you of this chart.
If one goes far enough in any direction in space or time, one runs into the edges of creation, fraying and porous. Beyond that, is the Far Realm. Truly infinite, larger than any 'infinity' of a defined plane.
Like Dagon, perhaps, Ssendam, Ygorl, and the others are just . . . emanations of truly limitless beings from Outside, ineffable, indescribable. And the slaadi are their spawn, their minions, their tools. Tools intended to destabilize, destroy, upset. To rewrite reality. To undo reality, that true Khaos may reign supreme. Of course, as chaotic as the tools themselves are, they impede their own aims at times.
And so, so many versions exist. What if every froglike, batrachian monster dedicated to chaos and/or evil was spawned by them?
Bullywugs. Their deity, Ramenos, is distinctly slaad like, and his consort is expressly a slaad. He represents inactivity and sleep, like one of the Ogdoad, above.
Boggards. In Golarion they worship Gogunta, and Dagon, and Rovagug . . . all ultimately destroyers. And we know what I did with Dagon...(see Spawn of Chaos). Really these are just bullywugs with the serial numbers filed off.
Hezrou.
Hydrodaemons.
Froghemoths.
Nergaliids from Exandria.
The list goes on.
Each may simply be the ever changing adaptation of a slaad to an new environment, the better to destroy it from within, or the distant spawn of the slaadi and the beings of that world. You see, since the slaadi themselves believe they predate Creation, and maybe they do, it is far more likely they are the ancestors of the Batrachi than the reverse.
What do you think?
