Asfaraba: The Story Behind D&D's Most Emotional Monster

hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that thinks the horrors of the Abyss might be a little bit less horrific if I don't know maybe they got into some therapy or something this week's episode is a real unique one because normally on this show we talk about monsters from D D's past and then convert them into fifth edition right well this week I've got something for you from dnd's future sort of the ask for rabba is a monster that I created entirely from scratch for the new monster book that I'm working on the quintessential guide to monster encounters so I thought it would be fun to give it the whole monster of the week treatment and give you guys a unique creature you will not be able to find anywhere else I mean I guess it's gonna be in this book that we're making but only like one other place so almost nowhere else now obviously unlike my usual content here on Monster of the week I'm not going to be converting this monster into 5th edition because I designed it for 5th edition d d but as always in the description down below there is of course a link to a free pdf that contains everything and all the information about this monster so you can use it in your game right away all that just to say whether you choose to actually buy the monster book or not the asparaba is yours to do with as you please now without further Ado let's talk about this monster and see just exactly what it's all about [Music] the osfaraba was first published in the quintessential guide to monster encounters a very cool book made by a very cool Trio of YouTubers I can't promise that's the last joke I'm gonna do like that during this video but I'll try I'm not gonna try the osfaraba at least I think are an intriguing race of creatures while they are technically aberrations they appear as 20 foot tall humanoid creatures they are typically clad in these sickly yellow robes that seem to have at one time been beautiful but have long since lost their luster these flowing robes are quite effective at obscuring the true shape of the osfaraba but if you were to catch a glimpse of the creature beneath all this fabric what you'd see would be a mostly humanoid form but with a few small exceptions for one they have four long distended arms with a reach that goes well beyond most humanoid-shaped creatures for their proportion you would also see that their skin is a pallid gray color and their features are very non-pronounced they of course Have Eyes a mouth nose and ear holes but they have very soft faces which can make it difficult to distinguish one of them from another the other iconic Mark of an ostraraba's attire in addition to their yellow robes is an ornate collection of ivory masks that they always keep with them they are never without these masks and often the collection of masks they keep with them can number over a dozen and in their Personal Collection back home there's really no upper limit on how many masks they might have typically they keep these masks Bound by a golden thread and carried within their robes however some might choose to display them on the outside of the robes if they have a particularly impressive collection I'm sure they are great at Halloween parties now each one of these masks is carved to express a different emotion a basic osfarabian Mass collection is going to consist of your most common and often extreme emotions such as Joy anger sadness Etc but some Advanced collections are going to contain more nuanced emotions which might include jealousy pridefulness or a Bittersweet moment maybe even the feeling you get when somebody you really love gives you a gift that really sucks now that's all good and fine they have this crazy collection of masks but I'm sure you're wondering why do they carry these masks around with them and there is a good reason for it but in order to explain that reason I'm gonna have to get a bit more into the origin of this ancient race depending on the fantasy world your DND game takes place in this origin story might vary from setting to setting but the key ingredient to their creation is the existence of the Gods if we're in the Forgotten Realms this would be the birth of EO foreign Theros we'd be talking about the Awakening of clothus and crew fix but regardless of setting when the first primordial deities of the Multiverse came to be their emotional and mental energy would sometimes Ripple out from them and become scattered in the void of creation when a being as powerful as a deity has an outburst of Rage Joy sadness or any other feeling on the vast spectrum of emotion that Cosmic emotional energy holds enough power to sometimes will something new into being whether the God was aware of it or not and the very first osfaraba who were born were born as a result of that emotional energy put forth by the gods but the osfaraba didn't simply come to be as identical beings each one of them would be born as a personification of the emotion responsible for creating them for example let's say a God in the primordial world is just really angry about something absolutely Furious that Extreme Rage might incidentally create an osfaraba not even by the God's design just completely by accident all that anger and frustration that raw emotion causes the osfaraba to manifest in osfaraba that is born as a result of this extreme anger is going to be a nearly perfect manifestation of anger it would be born angry and would have a hard time feeling anything other than anger at least for the opening moments of its life conversely in osfaraba Born of total joy and happiness is going to be just the happiest little forearmed aberration in the Multiverse but regardless of which emotion spawned each individual as faraba they are all entirely sentient beings capable of thought and expressing the entire spectrum of emotion even if they are predisposed to feel one emotion above all others at first they may find it nearly impossible to control their emotions almost always defaulting back to the one that they were born of we call this their core emotion but as beings were literally extreme manifestations of emotion and immune to dying of old age they have dedicated countless years to learning Mastery over their emotions and their emotional states and that is kind of where the masks come in see The Masks are enchanted with magic meant to dull their most extreme emotions within them from a mechanical standpoint these masks allow the ask for Robin to cast calm emotions on themselves almost indefinitely they are used as tools by Young asparaba to help them express emotions other than their core emotion until eventually they achieve Mastery and more importantly control over themselves once their training is complete they no longer require the masks in order to regulate themselves however the habit of swapping masks is often deeply ingrained in them by the time they reach this point so most of them just continue to use their masks for the remainder of their life and by this point in time the masks have become a part of the asparabian culture they've somewhat transcended their role as mere tools and become a symbol of status age and respect within the community in osfaraba with a large mass collection of high quality has likely been alive for a very long time and they also demonstrate an understanding of the complex emotions that exist within each of them to the extent where the most subtle emotions can be expressed it's kind of funny because to an outsider meeting in osfaraba for the first time they can seem rather emotionless and almost cold but in reality that couldn't be farther from the truth they feel emotions in such a profound way especially their core emotion that it is actually to the benefit of those around them that they mean control of the Maelstrom they feel within themselves obviously we're talking about a pretty powerful race of ancient creatures some of which might even predate most Gods but are they good guys or bad guys simply put the answer is yes allow me to explain osfaraba society and culture is pretty far removed from anything your typical mortal is going to understand they operate on a scale of morality that is so unlike what we might consider good or evil that it's honestly hard to say which category they fall into they're certainly sentient and able to make their own informed decisions about what they're doing but their goals are also so alien and on such a long timeline it's tough to pin down what their intentions really are throughout history they've been party to Great Deeds which have saved entire kingdoms just as much as they've been associated with atrocities committed against seemingly undeserving peoples the bottom line is that when it comes to the osfaraba they are primarily emissaries of change if one of these creatures approaches a mortal settlement whether it be village town Kingdom or country they're always there for a reason in even if it's a good reason this is always cause for unrest because whatever their goal something is definitely bound to change in a major way that said though osfaraba very rarely venture to the material plane most of their comings and goings happen in the various Outer Planes that exist way out in the Multiverse their societies are pretty strange also as they have no need for air food Drinker really any of the other common necessities of life most of the races value for this reason they found their cities and settlements in bizarre locations that are important for reasons known really only to them one commonality though between all their settlements is that they tend to be on The Fringe of the Multiverse in places very few if any gods have any amount of interest in see as beings born both powerful and inherently unstable they are disliked or even hated by most of the pantheon the birth of is extremely rare especially since the volatile nature of the Multiverse has changed a lot since its Inception and the survival of a newly born as faraba is even more Uncommon most of them are destroyed within minutes of their birth by the deity responsible for manifesting them however with the rise of the Mortal races a new source of emotion has been created Mortals tend to feel all kinds of stuff for all sorts of different reasons throughout the course of any given day all these emotions bouncing off each other would never even come close to the amount of emotional energy required to manifest in osfaraba just because you really hate your boss for scheduling you in this weekend even though three weeks ago you specifically asked for this Saturday off because it's your sister's wedding and you even signed the sheet to shift trade with Jonathan doesn't mean that a cosmic being of hatred is going to suddenly appear in your backyard however Mortals are for the most part pretty empathetic and a powerful emotion can sweep through a populist like wildfire if its cause is something Universal and common between everybody for example a city besieged by a hobgoblin army they have little chance to defeat in combat is likely going to be feeling a pretty Universal sense of fear or anxiety and when enough Mortals are united in that emotion for long enough eventually it can build to a point where all that energy manifests into a new asparaba the same could be true for a population angry with its unjust king or a kingdom unified and joyous celebration after a particularly long and arduous winter there are plenty of reasons why a large populace of Mortals might be United under one emotion and sometimes it can tip the scales of the multi verse just far enough to give birth to something entirely alien now we've talked about who the aspharaba are and sort of what their deal is we haven't really discussed what they're capable of I mean I've definitely alluded to the fact that they're pretty powerful but I think it's high time we explore just how powerful they are are ancient beings of cosmic origin so as you'd probably expect they clock in with a challenge rating of 18. when I was creating them I had this idea that they were this sort of perfected proto-humanoid race and their stats are meant to reflect that when we look at their ability scores we see 20s across the board this is pretty unusual for a creature of this power level the reasoning for this is that it is meant to reflect they're at the peak of everything a mortal creature is normally capable of but they don't have any ability scores that are crazy like up into the high 20s or even up to 30 like some other very powerful creatures do they aren't particularly skilled in physical combat but this is because they've spent their long lives learning something else entirely osfaraba are experts in the language of creation the language spoken by the most powerful deities and used to shape the very fabric of the Multiverse they are of course not fluent in this language and that's really what separates them from most powerful Gods but they've also spent countless Years Learning and mastering its intricacies so they are at a level well beyond what most Mortals could ever hope to achieve I go a little bit deeper into the concept of the language of Creation in my video about word archons but basically the bottom line here is that every action in osfaraba can take is done in the form of it speaking one of these power words their go-to attack is power word Rend by simply uttering this word with intent they can compel reality to shift and tear their target to pieces this attack deals 10 d8 Force damage to the Target or half as much on a successful Constitution's saving throw much like the Lich they also get a single casting per day of power word kill which while only usable once per day can dramatically shift if the balance of a fight if used strategically finally the thing that makes the osfaraba particularly tricky to face in combat is their utter Mastery of the Arcane by uttering power word Arcane the osfaraba can cast any spell in the game that is of seventh level or lower this ability is kind of wild because while it's not doing anything that a reasonably high level character can't also do and it's not really breaking the game in any way it does give the osfaraba unopposed flexibility this means that the osfaraba is going to have literally every trick in the book up its sleeves which I think can make for a pretty great encounter but it does put some extra consideration on the DM for just how nasty they want to be with this ability in addition to these actions the osfaraba of course has a handful of legendary actions power word pain is just a direct damage dealer type of word move is meant to help it move around the battlefield and power word no allows it to do a small amount of psychic damage as well as potentially read a creature's mind I think altogether this should make for a pretty interesting set of abilities to achieve a really cool and dynamic high level combat encounter but there are two final elements to this monster that are really meant to sell the cosmic horror idea behind its creation the first has to do with how they might finish off some enemies power word eradicate is something the asparaba isn't always going to use but when it does it does so with a lot of thought in place this ability can only target a creature with zero hit points so somebody who is either dead dying or unconscious but stable the target must succeed on a Charisma saving throw and if they fail they're erased from reality they no longer exist and they have never existed the Multiverse will bend to accommodate this new world in which they never existed changing as little as possible about the world as we know it but for all intents and purposes that creature is gone what ramifications this might have are up to the DM of course but there is a lot of potential for things to go flying off the rails when this ability comes into play because keep in mind the osfaraba might not necessarily use this against one of the players what happens if the osfaraba uses this ability against a prominent NPC such as the ruler of a kingdom the entire course of that Kingdom's history is now going to be dramatically different at least potentially or maybe his brother just stepped up and things are pretty much the same but that's up to the DM to decide and of course if that's not something the DM is interested in exploring there's no need to use this ability at all but it is there so even if it's just a threat in the back pocket use it as you will another key feature of this ability that's definitely worth mentioning is that anyone who knew the creature who just got erased from reality gets to make a wisdom saving throw to retain their memories of that person so if the rest of the party concentrates real hard at least they'll know what happened to their friend or some of them will anyways hopefully if some of the party members do manage to cling to their memories and they want to try and arrest you that individual there are only two ways to unerase that person the first is to cast a little spell called wish which is kind of your catch-all to bring somebody back from the dead who has died in a ridiculous or horrific way the second involves killing the osfaraba see when an osfaraba dies it's Death Shroud trait comes into play once the creature is destroyed their body implodes on itself leaving nothing behind except for a 15 by 15 foot hole in reality this hole appears as a two-dimensional black surface of swirling liquid as some of you probably already guessed this Terror in reality is a portal to another place and where that portal leads once again is up to the dungeon master it might go to another place on the same plane or maybe it goes to an entirely different plane all together together or it might lead to an alternate reality a reality to which their erased friend has been sent and can be rescued from regardless of where the DM decides this portal leads it is permanent and any creature can move through it so long as they can fit through it by using an action so that's pretty cool right I've really tried to include some interesting narrative stuff into this creature's abilities and its methods so that the DM has a few different things they can draw on if they find one particular possibility more interesting than the others but I mean there are a ton of different ways you can actually use this creature so let's brainstorm some ideas [Music] the plot hook I presented with this monster and the quintessential guide to monster encounters is definitely one way you can take this monster at the table in the book I describe an osfaraba being created as a result of a tremendous sadness felt throughout a kingdom this sadness might be from the death of a beloved ruler a horrible famine a lost War whatever the case is everybody's just having a downer of a time and as a result the osfaraba is born in the center of the city a catastrophic event that causes panic in the streets the players can then choose to approach this in a variety of ways of course one thing they can do is just try to kill the Rampage against rabba outright that'll solve the problem but they can also make skill checks using any of the skills on their sheet to try and calm the creature down and each check has a corresponding result based on whether they succeed or fail after all they are sentient beings and the osfaraba isn't out to necessarily cause destruction it's just a being born of pure anguish that doesn't understand its place in the world and that's all it knows if the players do manage to calm it down shortly after a group of three osfaraba emissaries arrive to collect their newly born kin assuming this all goes well they will then take the newly born as faraba back to their home with them so it can be trained using the masks etc etc but I mean there are a lot of potential ramifications to this right if they do kill the creature that portal which opens up could lead to any number of places and if they help calm it down the group of osfaraba who arrived to collect it might reward the party in some way for their assistance and who knows a few years later once it's learned control over some of its emotions that osfaraba might return to offer help to the party and thanks for literally saving its life the arrival of an osfaraba might also be a really cool way to start off a campaign This Tall four-armed creature dressed in bizarre robes and ornate asks might just show up at the city Gates and demand an audience with the King if taken to the king the OS problem might then have some life-changing news perhaps it's come to offer words of warning and a boon to the king's Champions to ward off an upcoming threat I mean there are tons of reasons it could be doing this it might be seeking to protect the kingdom knowing that a few hundred years down the line the osfaraba will need something from them or perhaps the threat is another osfarava who's gone Rogue and it wants to ensure its kind is not allowed to Simply roam free and wreak havoc that could actually be a really good setup for the arch villain of a campaign perhaps an ancient and Powerful osfaraba born of bloodlust has totally lost control of its emotions and is planning to orchestrate a devastating and apocalyptic event on the material plane if you wanted to take that to another layer of depth maybe the reason it's lost control is due to the interference of a Demon Lord or something the osfaraba Emissary no knows the realm stands no chance without some guidance so they've arrived to help take down their former kin or maybe there's a scholar of ancient text who has discovered the origin of the osfaraba and seeks to control one so they put together a situation that causes a grand unified emotion across the kingdom maybe they somehow amass incredible wealth and use it to hold the celebration the likes of which have never been seen before in order to summon an osfaraba from the resulting Joy then once summoned they use some sort of binding ritual to control the creature and harness its ability to speak the language of creation and it falls to the party to free it or stop it from being summoned altogether how ever you choose to use this creature I sincerely hope it suits your game table and some of you get to throw it up against your party either as an enemy or maybe even an ally as I mentioned before the osfaraba is just one of many monsters that I am creating as part of my contributions to a new monster book coming out called the quintessential guide to monster encounters the book is currently on Kickstarter unless I guess you could be watching this video from the future but either way I will leave a link to where you can check the book out in the pinned comment of this video and if you want to use this monster right now for free in the description down below there's a link to a PDF preview of this monster an encounter that's ready for the table and two other monsters with their own encounters that Wally DM Mr tarasque and I have made and prepared for our book as a sort of preview we're all really excited about this book and for those of you who do decide to back the project or purchase it in future land thank you very much I also want to issue a unique challenge to the community today the book is of course right now at least still in its preliminary phase it hasn't gone to print yet or anything I mean that's why we're doing the kickstarter so things can still change I want you guys to let me know in the comments here what you think about this monster not just about its stats and abilities but also its lore and ecology and all the kind of backstory stuff about the creature I'm sure a bunch of you have really great ideas and I think it would be so cool to have some Community collaborated stuff in this Monster's entry so yeah I don't know leave a comment or even jump in the Discord and let's chat there I just think it'd be really neat to kind of collaborate on something that is going to be used by potentially a bunch of people also I want to give a huge shout out to all the patrons out there thank you so much for your unrelenting support and of course I want to give a special shout out to our patron of the week this week's randomly selected Patron is Nick Conrad thank you so much for the support Nick you are pretty rad indeed and thank you for watching don't forget that if you you have a monster from a previous edition of d d or another tabletop game of any kind really and you want to see it show up on the channel and convert it into 5th edition let me know either on Discord and the monster suggestions Channel or here on YouTube in the comments and who knows you might just see it show up on the channel someday hopefully this week's video was fun for you guys I know it's a little bit outside of what we usually do on this channel but I promise that next week the upload is going to be something well you'll see it's gonna be real gross but in a fun way but very gross also as of the time of this recording I genuinely have no idea how the kickstarter is doing it might have been a total flop we might have been funded in five minutes I truly don't know but regardless to those of you who do take the time even just to check it out I want to thank you so much and to those who do decide to back the book I can't express how hype that is it is a huge dream of mine to be able to create cool d d monster content and you guys are the only reason any of that is even considered as a viable potential option both with regards to my channel but also with regards to this book and hopefully future stuff to come all of that basically is just to say I appreciate you thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video until then [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: jP1o4pZBDz4

Length: 27min 56sec (1676 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 02 2022