What They Don't Tell You About The Basilisk - D&D

the pounding of nearly a dozen heavy clawed feed resounds around you as the beast meanders in crimson spines sprout from its back at seemingly random lengths and intervals encompassing everything from its scaly brow to the tip of its gnarled tail the beast's eight clawed feet turn the ground below as it moves clumsily deep blue eyes seem to glow as it whips its head around spittle flying from its open mouth revealing rows of ragged pointed teeth this is the dungeons and dragons basilisk can i make that distinction of course since the basilisk of real myth legend has taken on many different shapes throughout history we know it as a snake as a lizard we know it sometimes even as a rooster but in dungeons and dragons it is a big fat lizard with multiple legs a powerful jaw and a pretty collection to turn people to stone let's not deal delhi too much on this one i am not happy at all with the fifth edition monster manual description of this one and i want to get right into it but before we do that of course as always let's talk a bit about our sponsor today this video is brought to you by the sunken isles a new dynasty dragons adventure coming to you via kickstarter very very soon the isles of manaki are a cluster of islands created by a roaming deity that is cast into the ocean of a foreign world and left to grow on its own plants grow suddenly and without explanation wild creatures are abundant and fantastical and the people native to this strange land can speak with authority to nature itself this is because everything in the isles can be considered a living spirit all of which are designed to work in a harmonious and communal way as an adventure it is constructed so that you have 20 weeks to save the isles from complete annihilation a week is roughly one to three sessions and you level up at the end of each which means of course that the adventure will indeed take you all the way to level 20. the adventure will feature branching paths choices and then consequences for those choices as you see the decisions that you make influence this story and come to roost at the end when a massive war breaks out between your allies and your enemies check out the link below and sign up to become notified for when the kickstarter goes live very soon now on february the 7th but now on to the video alright here's the fifth edition entry for the basilisk let's see what it has to say travelers sometimes find objects that look like pieces of remarkably life-like stone carvings of wild life missing parts that appear to have been bitten off seasoned explorers regard such relics as warnings knowing that the basilis that created them is likely to be nearby alright well nothing too crazy here yet let's keep going basilisks thrive in arid temperate and tropical climates they layer in caves or other sheltered sites most often basilisks are encountered underground this makes complete sense since they are of course lizards and will behave very much like lizards so let's keep going it then says a basilisk born and raised in captivity can be domesticated and trained such a trained basilist knows how to avoid meeting the eyes of those his master wishes to protect from its gaze but it makes a daunting guardian beast because of this use basilisk eggs are highly praised now this right here is the first contentious topic the training of basilisks and how effective that can be for a person to tame them to do this the reality is that it is not very easy or maybe even doable at all but we will cover that of course in a bit next we're told that basilisks are ponderous for hunting creatures but they need not chase prey meeting a basilisk supernatural gaze can be enough to affect a rapid transformation transforming a victim into porous stone basilics with their strong jaws are able to consume the stone the stone returns to organic form in the basilisk gullet some alchemists are said to know how to process the basilisk call it and the fluids contained within properly handled the gullet produces an oil that can return petrified creatures to flesh and life unfortunately for such a victim any parts lost in stone form remain absent if the creature revives rubification using the oil is impossible if a vital part of the petrified creature such as its head is detached now here we have the second and arguably way bigger contentious point this one is huge whether or not a basilisk can actually eat the stone of a petrified person and then gain sustenance from it this is important of course since it is crucial to their existence i mean you could even argue that this is the most important part about a basilisk the most important thing anyone should know right because i mean if the basilisks can eat petrified people then it should literally petrify every creature that moves it is basically free food that does not spoil but if the bacillus cannot eat petrified people then it would only use it as a last resort in order to survive since of course petrifying a creature means that he can no longer feed off of it but we will of course touch on this a bit we need to keep going here we have the stat sheet the creature has a lot of natural armor like a lot whether or not you are considering that the creature is uh arguably taking a minus one to its ac thanks to its low dexterity that is still a very high amount of armor almost as much as chainmail which is very impressive the creature is strong but sluggish with really low speed and dexterity not very smart either here we have its main ability of course it's petrifying gaze nothing too wild here if you meet its gaze then you start to become petrified it's important to note that it says right here that if the basilisk sees itself in a reflection then it can indeed petrify itself that is of course very important and then at the end we have a normal bite attack a 2d6 on its bite signifies of course an incredibly strong jaw which is particularly impressive for this creature size which is medium so the jaws are probably like crocodiles they are meant to be very very powerful but then we have a bit of a surprise here see the bite attack does poison damage you're left to wonder where that poison damage comes from because there is absolutely nothing on the stat sheet or lore description about any kind of poisonous effect or ability now there is of course a reason for this but this happens every once in a while in fifth edition where they just don't quite give you the context but you better believe it there's always a reason for things to be the way they are now without further ado let's go ahead and talk about what the 5th edition monster manual did not tell you about the basilisk the first thing that i do want to clarify before i even start this part is that most of the differences that i will be pointing out are specifically for the forgotten realms the forgotten realms is the default location where most of the fifth edition adventures are set it is in essence the planet where all of these avengers are set it is not the only planet of course you you have the magic the gathering books like pharaohs and ravnica and you have the separated planes like borovia and the feywild with curses strident the witch-like book but if you're interested in say baldur's gate 3 if you're interested in all these adventures from fifth edition if you play the dungeons dragons mmo or if you read any of the dmd novels then listen up because i'm going to tell you how basilisks are supposed to work in this world the basilisk is a lethargic and very lazy creature that is because its metabolism goes very very slow this has positives and negatives associated with it the negative is that virtually most creatures can get away from the basilisk if they want to if you ever encounter a basilisk and you simply do not want to deal with it literally all you have to do is just run the other way the basilisk will typically not want to follow you because it knows that it won't be able to catch up with you and it wants to conserve energy the positive to this though is that when a basilisk eats it doesn't have to eat for an entire month the waste internal digestion system works allows it to survive on one enormous meal a month which is good since it is only likely ever to catch something just about once a month because of course of how slow and lazy it is now the mentality of the basilisk which you would imagine would be if you needed to struggle so hard to get just that one meal a month makes it so that the creature is literally always hungry every single time it has the ability to eat it eats because the reality is that you never know when the next meal is going to present itself and so something peculiar can happen that you would be fairly surprised about because they're always hungry and from a survival perspective they are encouraged to eat every single time they can when they are quote presented with enough fresh meat a basilisk will literally gorge itself to death end quote the reason the creature works the way it does is because it cannot feed on petrified targets if it could it would petrify everything that came into its general surroundings and could presumably feed endlessly every other day but that is not the case in fact when the monster manual says that a basilisk can feed on petrified targets what they are actually saying is half true an adult basilisk cannot feed on petrified creatures but in fact a baby basilisk can quote these creatures have something in their bellies that allows them to digest petrified flesh as if it were in its original form for nourishment meat turned to stone is all the young eat however and they seem to lose its ability once they mature end quote a parent bacillus will petrify a target close to its den and then it'll bring its babies in so they can nibble on the stone and digest it for nourishment the parent cannot do that now let's talk a bit about petrification and what it actually does to a person since the concept of it is extremely relevant when dealing with these type of creatures first of all you do not need to be conscious of the gaze for a specification effect to work all that is required is for both eyes to meet hence a basilisk can petrify a sleeping person provided of course that its eyes are opened and can petrify creatures that have no mental awareness of the basilisk and even through materials like for example a fish underwater could be petrified now technically speaking you can become petrified even if you're blind depending on the nature of your blindness if your ocular system generally functions as in if your pupils have the ability to take in light into your eye then the petrification effect is likely to occur if you're blind because your acid was thrown into your eyes or your eyes were gouged out or something like that then of course the effect would not occur now everything that i'm about to tell you was written by ed greenwood who created the forgotten realm so listen carefully the eye of a basilisk produces radiation this radiation is then absorbed by the eyes of other creatures when they see each other or even itself if the basilis were to see itself in a mirror now the actual magical process that follows is very much unexplained however we do know that a circulatory system is required since the magical effect produces a chemical reaction that travels through the bloodstream of the creature creatures without a bloodstream would then not be affected by this type of petrification so for example that you could turn yourself into gas using magic in order to stop yourself from becoming petrified creatures that do not have a heart that pumps blood throughout their body like perhaps undead would be assumed to be immune to this type of effect now because the effect travels through the bloodstream the implication would be then that the petrification process would start in and around your chest and then spread out across your body until it reaches the limbs as the location becomes petrified you would lose the ability to move it or feel it it effectively becomes numb to you if your whole body becomes petrified then you entirely lose the ability to speak see or feel and then become entirely paralyzed now and this is very crucial guys it does not mean that you are unconscious and this is the quintessential important aspect of petrification your body has entered into a quasi state of suspended animation as you have literally become stoned which means your body will not age however your consciousness would still be active until and this is the important part you run out of air this is very difficult to explain but even though you are stoned even though you cannot feel or move or see you are still you and you're still alive your soul is still stalking your body the way ed greenwood describes it is that for as long as you have access to air to breathe then you maintain consciousness now of course you can't breathe while turning to stone so you typically only last for about one round before you lose consciousness so this will not apply for most people however if you were to have some kind of magical item that would eliminate your requirement to breathe like perhaps many underwater magical items or if you were to say be a race that did not require breathing well then you would maintain consciousness throughout the entirety of your petrification if this were to happen then it would generally only take a few hours before turning insane from the helplessness and the total isolation now if you were petrified but conscious and you could cast spells without the need for somatic or verbal components like for example if you were like a sorcerer with a subtle metamagic then yet you could still cast magic even though you were petrified though remember that you still cannot hear or feel or see anything so even though you could cast spells you would still be basically useless because you would not be able to understand your surroundings psionic casters are still a very strong menace even whilst petrified because of course they tend to have ways to sense outside of their bodies also based on this description of the petrification process you can do one plus one and end up with the conclusion that your belongings will not be petrified only your flesh so any kind of clothing armor or items you're carrying will be safe from this effect now the eyes of a basilisk are fascinating because they do actually a lot more than just petrify those who meet it see the eyes themselves just naturally exude this radiation that petrifies it does so without the command of the basilisk but the bacillus needs a way to stop it i mean you you can imagine how disastrous something like this would be when say interacting with creatures that it wishes to eat or when interacting with a partner or its own brood the bacillus babies for example are born with the ability to petrify and it would be a nightmare if the babies were just petrifying each other without a way to stop it right right so the basilisk has these two very interesting translucent membranes on its eyes that function like eyelids and one of these transparent eyelids comes down from above the eye while the other comes up from under the eye while both of these transparent eyelids are out the basil is casting just natural normal view of the world with a visual range of just about 90 feet anything after that becomes of course blurry to the creature now the interesting bit is that the basilisks can control these transparent eyelids independently and can choose to up or drop them whenever it likes and as it does different things happen to the visual capabilities of the creature when only one of the eyelids are out the visual range of the basilisk increases but it also grants it the ability to see radiation in the ultraviolet spectrum this is what we call ultravision it allows the basilisk to see gamma rays x-rays radio waves and more this effectively allows the basilisk not just to see in the darkness but more than that it allows them to see colors in the darkness which normal dark vision cannot do though of course keep in mind that this works only outside and in a limited capacity while underwater because that's where the radioactive waves from space would rain down upon the planet it wouldn't be very useful while underground where there's limited radiation and also the basilisk also has just normal dark vision on top of this so they're fine either way but anyways it gets even better these eyes are amazing the basilisk could also see into both the astral and the ethereal realm when only one of its eyelids are up it couldn't however see all of it at the same time it has to basically switch between them like a shutters so you could in fact sneak up upon a basilisk in the material world if the creature just happened to be looking into the ethereal at that moment now if the basilisk were then to drop both of his translucent eyelids so that there was absolutely no restriction on his eyesight then and only then would the basilisk emit the radiation needed in order to petrify those who meet its gaze it petrifies creatures in the material realm it turns ethereal creatures into what is called ethereal stone and automatically slays creatures that mean its case that are on the astral plane this is really interesting stuff so as you can see the basilisk can indeed choose not to use its gaze if it desires now the range at which you have to be in order for the eye to work and petrify you it tends to be just about 30 feet on average but that is for the average person see this particular range is interesting because it is actually dependent on how keen the eyesight of the victim is not of the basilisk if the victim is legolas who is trying to see with his elvish eyes if the halflings are being taken to isengard and instead he mistakenly looks upon a basilisk then he will be turned to stone an eagle can probably be turned to stone if it gazes a basilisk from all the way up in the sky hundreds of feet above if your eyesight is awesome then you're screwed when looking at a basilisk doesn't matter how far you are now the radiation produced by the eye of the basilisk is also interesting as well in that it can travel not just long distances but it can also be transported through magic quote cases have been reported of wizards employing wizard eye spells being stoned by basilisk guardians and persons employing crystal balls eyes of the eagle and similar devices being petrified at great distances end quote it is also incredibly important to note that creatures like these who have their eyes on the side of their head and not on the front tend to be able to independently see in a 260 degree arc to both sides of their bodies it is in the lore that the basilisks can indeed stone two creatures at the same time if those creatures happen to be on each individual side of the body you have been warned now all of this of course makes the basilisk seem incredibly overpowered but remember that they're not just lacy but they're also very very stupid a basilisk doesn't really understand much of what transpires around it it can be very easily tricked into gazing upon itself in a mirror it also cannot really be taught to do things it is a common misconception that you can for example train a basilisk into choosing and picking who to stone but that is a very very hard ask they are stupid as all hell and did i mention lazy quote like other reptilian creatures basilisks are cold-blooded they derive much of their energy from the heat of the sun and spend much time sunning themselves on rocks or heights to gather this heat they will often creep up to campfires at night for the same reason but unlike most reptiles basilisks can tolerate a fairly wide range of temperature and can also store heat efficiently in their coiled digestive organs thus they remain active on warm or mild nights even in early spring or late autumn basilisks who live deep underground always have ready access to volcanic heat and if these subterranean creatures are kept from this heat source for any longer than a day they will grow sluggish and ultimately perish within another three days like their smaller king among the lizard population a bacillus can regrow lost limbs and tails within one to four months provided they have an above average supply of food during this time end quote now this is not a misdirect video without reproduction so let's just jump right into it a basilisk can tell each other apart by smells they're actually pretty good at recognizing different individual basilisks by their odor when a duo of basilisks get together they mate for life and by instinct they breed every four summers when a basilisk needs to bang they have to do it in water because of how heavy they are and how lazy they can be it is frankly a lot of effort to sustain the mate's weight so they have to do it that way two days after mating the female will lay a cluster of greenish white eggs typically ranging from one to eight of them that are about the size of a man's fist the eggs themselves have kind of soft but fairly stretchy surfaces which allows for a level of handling and manipulating that other creatures eggs just don't get for example a basilisk will often carry their eggs in their mouth and then just drop them whenever they need to they're also known to just roll them through the ground in order to position them wherever they want and the eggs are expected to be able to withstand that when the eggs are in a suitable location the mother will cover them up in cool sand or will half cover them in cool wet mud basilisks are extremely fertile so it is almost guaranteed that every single egg will have a baby inside and if they survive four to six weeks they will hatch into basilisk babies which really do look just like miniature normal basilisk they will be four to nine inches long and like i said before they will have their full-on petrifying powers from the moment that they're born now an interesting thing is that during the nesting period so during those four to six weeks the parents do not eat anything at all focusing extremely hard on the defense of their babies at all costs this of course as you can imagine makes them extremely irritable and the more irritable that they get the more fanatical they become about the protection of not just their babies but of their general surroundings it will take a baby basil it's just about four to six months in order to reach its adult height which is about six feet in length not counting their tail the tail goes on for like another five to seven feet but yeah at that point they will weigh about 300 pounds for that whole process the parents will hunt for the babies like we mentioned before by stoning creatures and then taking those babies into the petrified victim for them to eat the babies will lose the ability to eat stone by the time that they mature and as soon as this happens they will leave the nest in order to find a mate of their own and then repeat the process now the monster manual did mention that you could extract a special liquid from the belly of a basilisk which would allow you to cure a petrified person of course now you know that only babies carry that oil but other than that oil the eyes of a basilisk are also worth a lot for magical users the internal pupil length and fluid of the basilisk eye is used as an ingredient in potions spell inks and the makings of items concerned with petrifying creatures and then the inner membrane or eyelid of the creature would then be used likewise in magic concerned with protection against petrification the intact eye of a basilisk can go for up to 1 000 gold pieces if sold to an alchemist on the other hand an intact basilisk egg can go for upwards of 500 gold pieces to people who still claim to be able to tame the creature into becoming an effective guardian now before we finish the video i did want to at least mention a bit about what's up with the poison effect that the bite of the basilisk has on the fifth edition monster manual there's actually not a lot about it and it comes from the second edition entry of the beast it's not even for the normal version of the basilisk either but instead it is it is a specific ability granted to the greater basilisk which is technically a different variation of the creature these guys apparently back in the olden days had a very poisonous breath they couldn't project that breath like say like a dragon could or anything like it but if you were to say smell their breath i don't know why you would do that then you would be affected by the poison at the poison it's more likely to be contracted at that point by the creature actually biting you than anything else and it was interesting that the claws of the creature were also supposed to carry that poison i think the reason that they added this poison is because the basilisk on the real life mythos was supposed to be something like a snake the basilisk is well known not just for its glare but for its poisonous breath if you read ancient poems then you would find a lot of that there's also old antisemitic passages of people say calling jews basilists claiming that they spoke poison and stuff like that it's a very old thing that basilisks were supposed to have poisonous breaths so i would imagine that that is where it comes from even though the actual dnd lore doesn't quite make a mention of how it works or why it is there i would also like to mention that there is a very popular creature called the dracolisk this is what happens when a young black dragon mates with a basilisk and you create an amalgamation of the two which effectively functions like a black dragon that can turn people to stone with its eyes very very scary stuff [Music] i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskin 5v magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne doc feeder the great 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Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022