UA player species don’t get a lot of lore, which is a darn shame because the Glitchling is definitely asking for some. So I thought I would share what I’ve made for my own Glitchling Conspectus which uses all of the given material we have for them.
“The pillars of planar law could never hope to understand their equal and opposite forces of chaos. But, like clockwork and without fail, these forces of law are eternally bound to try again and again to quantify and tams that which cannot be understood. To this end they created agents, mimicking the morphology of humanoids yet unmistakably modron in form. Set with the robotic single-minded goal of understanding chaos, yet after generations and generations of improvements they were met with failure.
That was, until the forces of law conceded. They had to reel back and consider a different approach, knowing they could not understand chaos, and as such any construct of a similar mind could not hope to understand either. As such, the core of these beings could only be a shard of chaos itself. A repulsive idea to the algorithmic, perfect minds of the modrons. But one they would not abandon on principle alone.
These new methods of production rarely produced results, often irreparably destroying or altering the biomechanical bodies the chaotic energy was to be housed in. But even relying on the unpredictable produced results, the new Modron agents with minds able to think and process information in a way unlike any other. Yet the chaotic spark of energy inside each one would impart any number of quirks, habits and unpredictable thoughts to them. As such they became known as “Glitchlings”, children of law but incomplete without chaos. Their minds, not too dissimilar to humans, could not stay forever in the perfectly-ordered cogs of Mechanus. With their new souls and minds came the thirst for enrichment, for excitement, for the new and the strange. For adventure.”
This is my way of reasoning how Glitchlings can be created in Mechanus while also having their quirks, along with the name. My glitchling even represents the whole ”being fueled by a spark of chaotic magic from limbo” by not even having a brain, instead his head is filled with this red light that pokes out through his lens eyes.
You can feel free to use this, by the way. But please leave your thoughts too because I like hearing them.
I like the idea of Glitchlings being a result of Modrons trying and failing to understand/catalog Chaos. It's a reasonable thing for the forces of Order to attempt (and bungle), and explains how Glitchlings end up free-willed. Nice writeup.
I felt that Glitchlings were an obvious attempt to bring back the Rogue Modron PC option from 2E Planescape without any of the actual lore regarding Rogue Modrons.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I felt that Glitchlings were an obvious attempt to bring back the Rogue Modron PC option from 2E Planescape without any of the actual lore regarding Rogue Modrons.
I sort of tried to reference that in the writeup by explaining that actually functioning Glitchlings are hilariously rare in a similar way to the statistical anomaly of a Modron going rogue. But I guess both of them aren’t too different aside from Modrons being more… geometric…
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
UA player species don’t get a lot of lore, which is a darn shame because the Glitchling is definitely asking for some. So I thought I would share what I’ve made for my own Glitchling Conspectus which uses all of the given material we have for them.
“The pillars of planar law could never hope to understand their equal and opposite forces of chaos. But, like clockwork and without fail, these forces of law are eternally bound to try again and again to quantify and tams that which cannot be understood. To this end they created agents, mimicking the morphology of humanoids yet unmistakably modron in form. Set with the robotic single-minded goal of understanding chaos, yet after generations and generations of improvements they were met with failure.
That was, until the forces of law conceded. They had to reel back and consider a different approach, knowing they could not understand chaos, and as such any construct of a similar mind could not hope to understand either. As such, the core of these beings could only be a shard of chaos itself. A repulsive idea to the algorithmic, perfect minds of the modrons. But one they would not abandon on principle alone.
These new methods of production rarely produced results, often irreparably destroying or altering the biomechanical bodies the chaotic energy was to be housed in. But even relying on the unpredictable produced results, the new Modron agents with minds able to think and process information in a way unlike any other. Yet the chaotic spark of energy inside each one would impart any number of quirks, habits and unpredictable thoughts to them. As such they became known as “Glitchlings”, children of law but incomplete without chaos. Their minds, not too dissimilar to humans, could not stay forever in the perfectly-ordered cogs of Mechanus. With their new souls and minds came the thirst for enrichment, for excitement, for the new and the strange. For adventure.”
This is my way of reasoning how Glitchlings can be created in Mechanus while also having their quirks, along with the name. My glitchling even represents the whole ”being fueled by a spark of chaotic magic from limbo” by not even having a brain, instead his head is filled with this red light that pokes out through his lens eyes.
You can feel free to use this, by the way. But please leave your thoughts too because I like hearing them.
I like the idea of Glitchlings being a result of Modrons trying and failing to understand/catalog Chaos. It's a reasonable thing for the forces of Order to attempt (and bungle), and explains how Glitchlings end up free-willed. Nice writeup.
I felt that Glitchlings were an obvious attempt to bring back the Rogue Modron PC option from 2E Planescape without any of the actual lore regarding Rogue Modrons.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I sort of tried to reference that in the writeup by explaining that actually functioning Glitchlings are hilariously rare in a similar way to the statistical anomaly of a Modron going rogue. But I guess both of them aren’t too different aside from Modrons being more… geometric…