Homebrew Dodomeki Species Details

The first curse

Kozakuran temple books do not begin with a people. They begin with a woman and a handful of holed copper.

She stole chōmoku—bird-eye coins—until shame could no longer catch her. The coins did not stay in her sleeves. They opened. Hundreds of small eyes pushed through the skin of her arms, each one the spirit of a stolen piece looking back at the hand that took it. Rice would not feed her after that. Wine soured in her mouth. Only metal went down, and metal lengthened her life the way food lengthens a mortal’s.

Shou scholars later argued it was never a god’s verdict. Coin in Kara-Tur is oath, tax, temple tithe, funerary paper, and—on the planes that touch judgment—soul. Steal past a certain line and the money learns your shape. It grows eyes so it cannot be lost. It hollows the stomach so only it will do. And if the thief is stubborn enough to live, the stale air of every closed purse she ever opened settles in the lungs.

That last part is the piece priests like to skip. The dodomeki do not.

The breath that crawled out of the mountain

In the Shimotsuke chronicles carried east into Kozakura, the first great dodomeki was not woman-sized. She stood taller than a temple gate. Eyes covered more than her arms. She ate horses in a grave-field by night.

A hero put an arrow in the brightest eye. She did not fall cleanly. Flame ran out of the wound. Her mouth split wider than a mouth should, and a cloud came out of her that blackened the ground and drove the hero back to his palace. She crawled into the caves under Mount Myōjin and spent four hundred years licking her own blood and fumes back into herself. A priest later talked a woman-shaped remnant of her into laying the evil down. The mountain still carries her name.

Whether that giant was an ancestor, a first mother, or a different curse wearing the same name is an argument dodomeki enjoy because it cannot be settled without finding her. What they do not argue about is the inheritance. Every daughter hatched since then is born with a trace of that grave-air in the chest. Copper-fed sisters spit a thin yellow haze that stings the eyes and turns the stomach. Gold-fed sisters exhale something darker, with the sweet-metal smell of a vault shut too long. A woman who has swallowed soul-tender breathes a cloud people say has a face in it for a moment, then does not.

They call it grave-fume in the old shrines and coin-rot breath in the markets. It is not a spell. It is the leftover of a wound that never finished closing. Poison does not take them; the first mother’s cloud burned that weakness out while she hid in the rock. A dodomeki can stand in her own exhalation and only smell copper.

Some circles leave a single platinum piece at certain mountain shrines “for the aunt who is still sleeping.” The pieces disappear. The air around those stones is bad for birds.

A race, not a lone ghost

They breed without men.

A dodomeki who has eaten enough—years of mixed coin, or one terrible feast of platinum and soul-tender—can shed a clutch of dull, coin-shaped eggs from the skin of her inner arms. The eggs look like unstruck blanks. Buried in a hoard, a grave-goods cache, a money-changer’s cellar, or the mud under a counting-house, they hatch into girls who already have too many eyes and a tightness in the throat, as if they had been breathing vault-air in the shell.

The mother may stay. More often she leaves the hoard as a nest and walks on. Daughters remember the taste of the metal they were born under before they remember speech. They cough once on the first night and a little stain of yellow sits on the cloth. That is how a midwife who knows them tells a live birth from a still one.

No dodomeki has ever been born male. Magic meant to force the matter produces stillbirths, cursed coins, or a daughter anyway. They do not take husbands. Some keep companions. Most keep ledgers.

The body

A dodomeki looks like a woman until the sleeves come up. The arms hang past the knees. The skin there is a field of small bird-like eyes that blink out of sequence. Cover them and she can pass in a market. Uncover them and surprise becomes almost impossible. Even if the rest of her is beaten unconscious, the arms keep watch. Cut an eye and it is whole again before the next exchange of blows. Cut the arm and she will remember you.

The extra reach is the old idiom made flesh. “Long arms” meant thief. Their arms are long. A purse can leave a belt while her feet are still a step farther away than a human’s would be.

The hunger is not metaphor. Coin on the tongue dissolves into heat and iron-sweetness. Copper is thin and sour and barely keeps her standing. Gold is meat. Platinum is festival. A soul coin is a scream that fills the belly for months and buys years the way a harvest buys winter. Food and drink do nothing. A sister who goes too long without metal does not die in a week; she thins, the arm-eyes dull, the breath turns dusty, and she falls into a coin-dream coma until someone puts metal in her mouth.

The fumes live lower than the hunger. They pool behind the teeth when she is angry, wounded, or standing over a hoard she cannot yet take. Young dodomeki leak by accident in their sleep and stain the bedding. Older ones learn to keep the jaw shut until they mean it. The cloud does not care who is friend. Circles that share rooms have rules about who may open her mouth indoors.

Where they live

They are urban. Rice paddies bore them. Markets do not. Bad air in a closed street is a tool. Bad air in an empty field is a waste.

Kozakura and Wa. Temple-side alleys, night ferries, castle-town quarters, roads where tax chests move. Old families keep respectable fronts: pawn shops, money-changing stalls, funeral-coin sellers. Sleeves down in daylight. Books closed to the magistrate. A known grave-fume incident in a crowded lane is the sort of thing that ends a cover, so city dodomeki treat the breath as a last argument, not a greeting.

Shou Lung. They follow the Dragon’s roads and the coastal hongs. Magistrates classify them as yaoguai of greed. A few are licensed as hunters of counterfeiters, on the theory that only a coin-eater can smell false metal and only a woman who breathes rot can clear a vault of things that should not be counted. The license is a collar. They wear it until it pays less than running.

T’u Lung and the Pirate Isles. Less law, more coin in motion. Here they stop pretending for weeks at a time. Ship-holds and smugglers’ caves suit the breath. Pirates who have shared a prize with a dodomeki learn to stand upwind.

Beyond Kara-Tur. A few ride Shou junks to Faerûn. Calimshan’s counting-houses, Waterdeep’s vaults, and the trade-fair circuit agree with them. Soul coins are a legend among them the way spice is a legend among cooks: rare, dangerous, and worth crossing a plane for. Devils who mint such tender have learned that a dodomeki can smell a soul coin through a hole in the world, and that threatening her with poison is like threatening a fish with water.

They avoid open wilderness unless a caravan is on it. A forest has nothing they can swallow and nowhere useful to breathe.

Society among themselves

They do not build nations. They build circles.

A circle is three to a dozen dodomeki who have agreed not to eat one another’s marked hoards and not to open their mouths at the table. They meet on new-moon nights in rented upper rooms, shrine storehouses, or the back of a closed exchange. They trade information: which magistrate is moving a tax chest, which temple is melting votive coins, which devil-cult in a foreign port is minting soul-tender. They do not share freely. They sell to each other in rumors.

Status is not age. Status is how long you can afford to live, and how heavy your breath has become. A young dodomeki who swallowed a wrecked tribute barge outranks a century-old sister living on copper. The gold-fed ones do not only live longer. Their grave-fume carries farther. In a circle, that is both prestige and a reason to give them the seat nearest the window.

Killing another dodomeki is not taboo. Eating her cache afterward is rude only if you were sworn to the same circle. Using grave-fume on a sister in a closed room is worse than theft. It is treated as an attempt to unmake the agreement that lets them sleep near one another. There is no queen. There are women who have eaten enough to stop fearing time, and everyone else stands a little aside—and a little upwind—when they walk in.

Daughters are taught three mouths:

1. The mouth that speaks.
2. The mouth that swallows coin.
3. The mouth that empties the lungs.

Using the third for pride is considered childish. Using it to keep a hoard, to drop a room of guards, or to finish a hunt the arms started is considered adult.

Relations with others

Humans who know the stories cover their purses, uncover their holy symbols, and try not to stand in a doorway with a long-sleeved woman if the air has gone sweet and metallic.

Path-of-Enlightenment and Buddhist priests still tell the Chitoku ending: a dodomeki who listens long enough can choose to stop. Some have. Those few live on the edge of temples, swallow only alms-coin, and keep the third mouth shut until the grave. The rest call them starved, but they say it quietly. A woman who can afford not to breathe rot is either holy or finished, and both are dangerous in different ways.

Merchants hire them and do not ask why the new clerk never eats at the common table or why the vault cats avoid her. Thieves’ guilds that have met one either make her factor of the counting-room or try to cut the arms off and discover, too late, that the problem was never only the hands.

Soldiers hate the breath more than the eyes. Eyes can be covered. A cone of grave-fume in a gatehouse does not care about armor. Town watches in Kozakura keep cheap cloth masks soaked in vinegar in the lockup for this reason. The masks help people stay standing. They do not help the coins stay in the belt.

Devils find them interesting and inconvenient. Poison is a Hellish habit. It does not work here. A creature that eats soul coins, smells them through extra-dimensional silk, and answers a contract dispute with a lungful of mountain-rot is a poor customer and a worse debtor.

They are not mindless. A dodomeki can love a city, a sister, a night-market stall, a child she did not hatch. The hunger and the fumes sit beside those things rather than erasing them. That is what makes them difficult. A monster that only wants gold can be predicted. A woman who wants gold, air to spend on the people who deserve it, and enough years to keep a promise is harder.

Belief and omen

Among themselves they say the eyes watch what was stolen, the stomach keeps what was stolen, and the breath is the complaint of every closed box that was opened wrongly.

A dodomeki whose fumes come out pale and weak is thought to be poor, ill, or lying about her last meal. A dodomeki whose cloud hangs in the lane after she has gone is thought to have eaten something that still had a name. New-moon births during a minting week are lucky. Births during a temple-melting of votive coins are not; those daughters come out coughing and stay hungry.

They do not pray to the first giant. They pay her, sometimes, with one good coin on a mountain stone, and they do not linger if the birds have gone quiet.

Names

A dodomeki often keeps the human name she had before the eyes opened, then adds a market-name. Others take names that sound like ledgers or weather.

Personal names: Hitomi, Chōko, Kane, Tomoe, Shizuka, Mei-ling, Lihua, Yumi, Aiko, Suyin.
Market-names: Longsleeve, Bird-Eye, Hundred-Watch, Copper-Mouth, Ledger, Night-Exchange, Aunt Platinum, Grave-Air, Upwind.

A daughter hatched from a hoard may be named after the mint-mark of the coins she was born under. A daughter whose first cough stained the cloth dark may be given a breath-name and told to earn a softer one.

Dodomeki Traits

Your dodomeki character has the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1.

Age

Dodomeki mature and age at the same rate as humans, a newly cursed dodomeki is an adult. Unfed, her body withers over a few decades. Fed on coin, she does not age in any way that matters; consumed currency lengthens her life.

Alignment

Most Dodomeki lean toward Neutral or Neutral Evil. Hunger for coin is not always cruelty, but it rarely produces saints.

Size

Dodomeki stand between 5 and 6 feet tall. Your arms hang past your knees. Your size is Medium.

Creature Type

You are a Monstrosity.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 35 feet. Whenever you move toward currency you can sense, your speed is doubled for that movement.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 120 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can see through magical darkness in this radius.

Natural Weapons

Claws

Your claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes made with your claws. If you hit with them, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d8 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Your claw attacks use your racial melee reach (typically 10 feet). When you hit a creature with a claw, you can use Long-Armed Thief to attempt to steal from that target as part of the attack.

Bite

Your fangs are a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength  modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Coin-Eater

You gain no nourishment from food or drink. You are sustained only by consuming currency.

As an action, you may consume currency you are holding. You suffer no negative effects from eating metal, stamped coin, soul-stuff, or similar tender. You are immune to poison damage and being poisoned.

Daily fare. Each dawn, you must consume currency worth at least 1 sp (10 cp counts). If you do not, you suffer the effects of going without food. Copper will keep you standing. It will not make you thrive.

Devour Tender. As an action, you consume currency you are holding and destroy it. You regain hit points based on the total value consumed in that action, as shown below. Any healing beyond your hit point maximum is lost.

Value consumed	Hit points regained
1 sp–9 sp	1d4
1 gp–9 gp	2d4 + your Constitution modifier (minimum +0)
10 gp–49 gp	3d4 + your Constitution modifier
50 gp–99 gp	4d4 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus
100 gp or more	4d8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus
1 soul coin*	4d10 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus

 

 

*A soul coin uses the soul-coin row instead of its converted gold value. Extra ordinary coins eaten in the same action do not stack on top of that row.

Years bought in metal. Currency you consume lengthens your remaining natural lifespan:

• 10 cp = +1 hour
• 1 sp = +1 day
• 1 gp = +1 week
• 1 pp = +8 weeks
• 1 soul coin = +1 year

Keep a running total. This does not make you younger. It only pushes back the date on which an unfed dodomeki would wither.

Coin-Sense

You can sense any currency within 300 feet of you. You know its exact location, amount, and value, whether a creature is carrying it, and that creature’s type. This sense detects copper, silver, electrum, gold, platinum, trade bars, gem-currency, soul coins, and similar tender. It functions even if the currency is hidden by magic or stored in an extradimensional space (a bag of holding, a handy haversack, a portable hole, and so on).

Cunning Action

You can take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action as a bonus action.

Eyes of the Stolen Hoard

Bird-like eyes stud your arms. You can cover them with long sleeves, wrappings, or gloves, or leave them bare.

• You have expertise in Perception.
• While the eyes on your arms are uncovered, you have advantage on Perception checks that rely on sight, you cannot be surprised, and you can see while you are unconscious.
• If any of the eyes on your arms are damaged or destroyed, they are fully restored at the start of your next turn.

Long-Armed Thief

Your reach for melee attacks—and for any other effect that uses your melee reach—is increased by 5 feet.

You have proficiency in Stealth.
You have expertise in Sleight of Hand, and you have advantage on Sleight of Hand checks.
You can make a Sleight of Hand check as a bonus action.

When you hit a creature with a melee attack, you can immediately make a Sleight of Hand check against that same target as part of that attack, stealing a small object or coins it is carrying on a success.

Natural Armor

When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor. 

Noxious Exhalation

As an action, you exhale a cone of poisonous fumes. Each creature in the area must make a Constitution saving throw (DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier).

On a failed save, a creature takes poison damage and is poisoned for 1 minute. On a successful save, it takes half damage and is not poisoned.

A creature already poisoned by this exhalation that fails the save again has the duration of the  poisoned condition extended by 1 minute.

You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. You are immune to your own fumes.

The cone’s length and the damage scale as you gain levels, as shown below.

Level	Cone	Poison Damage
1st–4th	15 feet	4d6
5th–8th	20 feet	5d6
9th–12th	25 feet	6d6
13th–16th	30 feet	7d6
17th–20th	35 feet	8d6

Languages

You can speak, read, and write two languages of your choice.