Somehow these always struck me as gamma world monsters for whatever reason. The sort of critter Samurai Jack would befriend for an episode. Anyway, mechanically speaking they teleport behind you and bite your ankles and flee early making them really hard to pin down if you're antagonistic, but at the same time, there's no particular reason to be on their bad sides right off the bat. They have a decent treasure type and, just like giant beavers, children you can sell for scads of gold on the market. Once again I find myself puzzled at who exactly is obsessively buying up all these talking animal babies in the world implied by the D&D setting, and what they hope to accomplish
 |
| i have my suspicions tho |
Blink Dogs hail from the isle of Sometimes, a small island off the coast near the city Oroboro that only sometimes exists. Everyone born there and all items created there are similarly intermittent, making, for instance, a sword an amusing curio but not something to rely upon (whenever used or looked for in a backpack, such items have a 50% chance of vanishing for a round instead). Uniquely, dogs of the island grow more humanish in intellect (recall all animals are sapient, just very different psychologically from people) and have an instinctual control over their 'blinking.' In anycase, these Lassie-tier superdogs are trained and sold to people all over the world (and especially to Yuban Jackal-Priests) for exorbitant prices (2500gp, possibly not adjusted for a silver standard) and demand is always kept high because breeding beyond the shores of Sometimes does not guarantee a full inheritance of the desired abilities, and over-exuberant dogs can vanish into the wild and go feral whenever they please due to their abilities, and due to their intelligence, they are likely to do so if not treated with utmost affection.
Blink Dogs are illegal in the Whitegreen City of Prince's Spit, as the high temple of Our Lady of Gardens forbids all mutant deviations from the animal forms (and plant forms) carefully domesticated and shaped by Our Lady in ages past. They are also illegal in the cities of Vint-Savoth, as the populace is extremely anxious when it comes to any hint of corruption of beasts from the fallen Blood Moon. When it comes to beast battlers of the Beast Islands, they have a reputation of being 'soft rich boy' fighting animals, bought by rich parents for novice beast battlers who are likely to lose the respect of the dog and have it teleport away from them and choose someone they find worthier (or simply end up joining a pack of island-dwelling dogs.)
Unbeknownst to all but a few sages of Heleologos, the reason behind the isle's disappearance is due to it being drawn into the Mirror Realm. The blink dogs prosper well enough in the dark reflections (though complete darkness or blindess means they cannot see the mirror realm and therefore cannot teleport), and descendants oft return to Sometimes, regressed to feral Blink Wolves, and so the stock of dogs is replenished. Unbeknownst to even those sages is that Blink Dogs enjoy a certain holy awe from regular dogs, who view Blink Dogs as their superheroes and paladins, basically. Blink Dogs will oft be tasked by local dog communities to defeat great evils that not even a whole pack of wild dogs can defeat- Catlords being the main threat, as since they have upset the natural order of the foodchain, the teeth of regular dogs(and heck, most mortal weaponry and spellery) cannot touch them. Besides more 'standard' monsters, the other thing heroic Blink Dogs are tasked with is keeping an eye on the mirror realm, should the Puma-That-Walk(the sunset version of displacer beasts) grow bold and begin peeking out from mirror frames, jaws a-slaver.
 |
| even the ontologically vague Void Monk swordmaster Sa of Sometimes cannot reliably strike down a blink dog preferring to blink behind a tree |
No comments:
Post a Comment