Fiend Factory 5E. White Dwarf 29: The Argorian Wormkin

Issue 29 The Argorian Wormkin

This issue features another “mini-scenario”, titled The Desert Light.

A tower rises out of the desert sands, from which shines a light. Exploring further, the party discover the tower is the top of a buried building, and the light comes from a shaft surmounted by spiral stairs that lead down into the building proper. Here they discover most of the denizens, and the light source, an orb of continual light.

It’s a neat little setting, and I realised that I, in fact, nicked it as an adventure setting, the very same adventure where I used the shadow goblins back from Issue 26.

Outside the tower, the party may encounter a Giant Sandcrab.

This is a pretty straightforward monster from Roger E Moore. Monsters that burst out of the ground are common ideas, and why not a crab with an extra poisonous claw? But, of course, you could just use Giant Crab statistics, so not much point in statting this one.

The middle floors of the tower are inhabited by Andy Wouldham’s Anubi, strong jackal-headed humanoids obviously based on the Egyptian god.

They’re strong, speak in clicks and whistles, are immune to sleep, charm and fear, and some of them can use magic but consider the use of magic against non-magical opponents to be cowardly. The Kail are simply a stronger subspecies.

The bottom floor is guarded by some Shim-Shari, by Glenn Godard (he of the Mandrake People). Incidentally, Glenn confounds me every time by spelling Glenn with two “n”s and Godard with one “d”.

The shim-shari are constructs made of sand, that use a highly tuned vibration sense to “see”. Being headless, they are immune to all visual effects but can be deafened. They tend to be armed with halberds, but also have some kind of mercy and so rarely attack non-combatants. The name “is desert tongue for skull-cleaver”.

They’re quite interesting, and I was tempted to do these guys.

In the end, though, I plumped for the final creature guarding the inevitable treasure chest, Barney Sloane’s Argorian Wormkin.

Partly because I love a good origin story, and partly because they’re both disgusting and yet mechanically simple, with a signature ability that I can see causing endless “fun”. There wasn’t a great deal of decision making in how to stat these – the Split ability is basically nicked from the black pudding, but will only be much of an issue against characters that deal quite low amounts of damage; perhaps more dangerous is the paralytic venom.

I have no idea, however, what kind of stance the fighter in the picture is meant to be taking. 

Argorian Wormkin

Tiny aberration, unaligned

Armour Class 11 Hit Points 7 (2d4 + 2) Speed 20 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 5 (-3) 12 (+1) 12 (+1) 1 (-5) 10 (+0) 2 (-4)

Proficiency Bonus +2 Senses blindsight 60 ft., passive Perception 14

Languages –

Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)

Split. Any attack that does not reduce the wormkin to 0 hit points in one go causes it to split into two identical wormkin, each with the same statistics, and each with the same remaining hit points. ACTIONS

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) piercing damage, and if the target is a creature it must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw against this poison or become incapacitated for 1d8 rounds.

At the end of this column are the results of the latest Fiend Factory poll, from, I forget which issue. Interesting that I’ve converted five of the top ten (Dream Demon, Mandrake People, Russian Doll Monster, Forest Giant and Phung), ignoring two for already being in the 5E Monster Manual (Cyclops and Incubus), and the remaining three as being not quite different enough. Of these, I may still go back to convert the Shadow Goblins. The Svart still really aren’t different enough to goblins, stat-wise (although in 5E you could swap out the dodgy/swervy ability of gobins for something else, I didn’t consider that), and the Winter Kobolds again are really just kobolds with flavour.

Note that I also, however, did two in the worst five as well! In my defence, the Bonacon was the best of what was a non-serious batch of monsters anyway. And the Crystal Golem, I don’t think, was that bad. Perhaps people were swayed by That Picture. And, of course, I have to pick *one* monster from each issue, even if the Fiend Factory was a bit weak for that month.