Homebrew Nudibranch Species Details

 

Nudibranchs are an aquatic people of otherworldly grace, living in the oceans of the world. They live in the deepest, darkest depths, in the midst of rolling ocean-sediment hills or in rocky spires glittering with coral, where beautiful, entrancing and monstrous creatures swim and gentle particulates waft in the currents. Nudibranchs love nature, dance, and music.

Graceful, Colourful, and Dangerous

With their unearthly grace and bright, colourful features, Nudibranchs appear hauntingly beautiful to other races. They are slightly taller than humans on average, ranging from well under 6 feet tall to just over 7 feet. They can be more or less slender than humans, weighing only 100 to 145 pounds. Males and females are about the same height, and males are only marginally heavier than females.

Nudibranchs’ colouration encompass many variable, multi-coloured skin patterning. One may see reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, whites and silvers. Nudibranchs have no hair, instead they possess cerata, fleshy structures that aid in respiration. Cerata are also used, in some cases, for attack and defence. Nudibranchs eat stinging celled animals (Cnidarians) such as anemones, hydroids or jellyfish. The stinging cells or nematocysts are passed to the tips of the cerata. Here the nematocysts mature and are then used by the nudibranch for theirown defence.

Some Nudibranchs use their cerata for decoy tactics. Certain cerata are not armed with nematocysts, but when attacked, the nudibranch will drop one or more cerata, which produce a sticky secretion and wriggle energetically for some time after being cast off, causing a distraction and allowing escape.

A Different Perspective

Nudibranchs live as long as humans, but most never visit the dry lands. When they do, they are often excited and curious. However, they are most certainly not naïve. The ocean contains many dangers, both mundane and magical. When acquiring knowledge nudibranchs can focus their minds with great alacrity. In the depths, they communicate non-verbally, using telepathy, sign-language and, occasionally, dance.

Like kelp, drifting in the waves, nudibranchs are flexible in the face of danger. They may use diplomacy, compromise or even violence, depending on the individual. They are just as likely to retreat from intrusions into their settlements as they are to band together and inflict a variety of venoms to the intruder.

Hidden Depths

Most nudibranchs dwell in small villages hidden among the ravines of oceanic crust. Nudibranchs hunt jellyfish, gather crustaceans, and grow sponges. They are talented artists, crafting fine sand-sculptures and coloured glass ornaments. Contact with outsiders is highly limited in their homelands, though a few nudibranchs come ashore to trade crafted items for products unavailable in their ocean home.

Nudibranchs encountered outside their own lands are commonly traveling dancers, artists, or mages. Many nobles and bards compete for the services of nudibranch instructors to teach dance or magic to them or their children.

Exploration and Adventure

Nudibranchs take up adventuring out of curiosity. They can come to enjoy exploration and adventuring. They find the pace of human society familiar, so they find careers easily. Nudibranchs also enjoy exercising their martial prowess or gaining greater magical power, and adventuring allows them to do so.

Nudibranch Names

Nudibranchs use descriptors as names. "Angel, Blue, Braid, Bright, Clown, Chroma,  Dash, Elegant, Fin, Gentle, Grace, Green, Hunter, Jab, Mantle, Rainbow, Red, Regal, Ribbon, Silver, Speedy, Triton, Twist, Yellow.

Nudibranch Traits

Your Nudibranch character has a variety of natural abilities, the result of thousands of years of ocean evolution.

Poison Immunity

Nudibranchs can consume and utilise poisons.

Flexible Bodies

Nudibranchs cannot be paralysed.

Stinger

Nudibranchs that feed on jellyfish can store the creatures' nematocysts (stinging cells) in the dorsal body wall, the cerata. These stolen nematocysts, called kleptocnidae, wander through the body without harming the nudibranch. Once further into the creature, the cells are assimilated and brought to specific placements on the creature's hind body. Nudibranchs can protect themselves from the jellyfish and their nematocysts. Similarly, some nudibranchs can also take in plant cells (symbiotic algae from soft corals) and reuse these to make food for themselves.

Nudibranchs use a variety of chemical defences to aid in protection, but it is not necessary for the strategy to be lethal to be effective. Some sponge-eating nudibranchs concentrate the chemical defences from their sponge in their bodies, rendering themselves distasteful to predators. Furthermore, nudibranchs contain a mixture of sponge chemicals when they are in the presence of multiple food sources, as well as change defence chemicals with a change in diet. This, however, is not the only way for nudibranchs to develop chemical defences. Certain species are able to produce their own chemicals without dietary influence.

Another method of protection is the release of an acid from the skin. Once the specimen is physically irritated or touched by another creature, it will release the mucus automatically.

Ability Score Increase

Your Dexterity score increases by 2. Your Constitution increases by 2.

Age

Nudibranchs' reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, and live to roughly the same age.

Alignment

Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others’ freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not. The drow are an exception; their exile into the Underdark has made them vicious and dangerous. Drow are more often evil than not.

Size

Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision

Accustomed to ocean depths, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.

Keen Senses

You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and Aquan. Aquan is fluid, with deep, resonant intonations and intricate grammar. Nudibranch oral tradition is rich and varied, and their songs and poems are rarely heard among other races. Many bards attempt to learn their language so they can add nudibranch ballads to their repertoires.