Homebrew Begaller Species Details

Begallers are humanoid parasites known for their strange mode of life: Instead of living in houses or holes or forts, they construct and dwell within galls. 

Small and Odd

Begallers are strange creatures with outlandish features. Their heads are large, flat, and elongated, with a total of 4 long, pointed ears. Their eyes are rather large and they typically possess bizarrely long noses. They have 4 great tusks that jut out of their wide maw, and a massive tongue shaped like a gigantic worm. 

Their body is round, and their limbs are long and thin. Usually they stand in a crouching stance, in which they are nearly as wide and deep as they are tall. Their hands and feet are unusually large, and bear many digits: The hands have 6 fingers and the feet bear 7 toes. 

Their skin is the green of sickness and their hair, when present, grows long and thin with a pallid hue. Their eyes can be many different colours, from red to gold to even a rosy hue. Often their body is mottled or patterned, giving a subtle variation in colour to break their outline. 

Galling Societies

Begallers, as the name implies, make galls. Specifically, they construct massive galls as houses or even cities within the body of massive creatures, their usual host being great ancient aboleths and other such aberrations. These galls are rather complex structures, grown using special skills and abilities known only to the begallers. They contain all varieties of tissues, and in some cases even whole organs are grown in their walls. These galls do not only serve as housing, but in many cases also provide food, raw materials, and even aid in breeding. 

Besides these galls, their society is still rather strange. Spending their life embedded in flesh, they tend not to have the best grasp of date and time. Furthermore, their fleshy habitat provides ample cheap food, which greatly alleviates the risks of poverty or famine for them. This fleshy lifestyle also effectively shields them from both war and trade: Altogether, this leads to a rather simplistic society, lacking a military, economy, or government.

All begallers are equal as labourers, working throughout the year to maintain and grow their gall. When time is available away from work, many begallers engage in various activities, mainly consisting of philosophy, games, or plain socialization. 

Strange Cycles

Stranger still is the begaller's life cycle. The usual life-cycle starts with the tongue, which grows in length continuously. When they grow too long, it drops off and breaks into segments: These segments then grow mouths and rears and burrow into the gall-flesh as worms. After several months, they pupate near the surface and a few days later emerge as a new begaller.

This is not the only way they bear young: Occasionally they need to spread. To achieve this, first they elect a queen. Once elected, the queen's tongue turns into a giant fat caterpillar, while the other individuals continue to bear worms: These worms, however, are much larger than usual. Instead of growing into new begallers, these larger worms become pregnant and birth small caterpillars, which mate with the queen's caterpillar. At the end of the breeding period, the queen's caterpillar falls out of the queen's mouth, before birthing a litter of small winged froglets. 

These froglets fly away from their home gall in search of a new host. They live in the wild for up to a year, up until they find a suitable host. When this host is found, they attach themselves to its skin and metamorphose into new elder begallers, which proceed to construct a new gall for themselves. 

Begaller Names

Begaller naming systems vary from gall to gall, but usually the convention most hold to is that a new begaller is named for an organ, tissue, or vessel of the host (or sometimes multiple organs), often with an adjective appended to distinguish them. There are no distinctions between male and female names in most galls. 

While this is the most common mode of naming, others exist, and furthermore many begallers far from a gall might take a name from the peoples around them.

Example Names: Liver-Tall, Heart-Hearty, Spine-Fat, Aorta-Balls-Dumb, Vein-Genius, Nervebranch-Jerk, Guts-Bladder-Lazy

Begaller Traits

Your begaller character has an assortment of abilities from their gallborn ancestry.

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Age

Begallers count their age from the end of pupation, at which point they are already adults. They age swiftly, generally dying at 15 years of age, though with the aid of begaller medicine their life can be extended to 800 years.

Size

Begallers, in their typical standing position, scarcely reach 2 feet high, though if they stand up straight they can get almost to 4 feet. Your size is Small.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Organic Tremorsense

While standing or climbing on the flesh of a living creature, you have tremorsense. This extends throughout the creature's body, but not beyond it.

Aberrant Dwelling

You have advantage on saving throws against attacks, spells, or other effects from aberrations.

Blight Sting

Your long tongue can strike a sting against your foes. The sting attack deals 1d4 piercing damage and can be used without any free hands. 

You can envenom your sting, dealing 1d6 poison damage with each sting. The target must also make a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to 10 + your Constitution bonus. Aberrations have disadvantage on this saving throw. If the target fails, they are subject to a disease which you select when performing the sting. The options are: 

• The target is charmed or frightened for 1d4 turns. 
• The target's hit point maximum is reduced by 1d6. 
• The target cannot regain hit points for 2d6 turns. 
• The target's speed is halved.

This can be done a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, reseting at a long rest.

At 5th level, you can envenom a weapon that deals piercing damage and which you are proficient in. This follows the same rules as above.

Flesh Melder

You gain proficiency in the Medicine skill.

Blood Breath

You can breathe while submerged in the blood, or similar fluid, of a living creature. If the creature dies or begins suffocating, you can no longer breathe in the blood. 

You can also breathe underwater for 30 minutes. Once you have reached that limit, you cannot breathe underwater again until completing a long rest. 

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and Deep Speech.