Hello, everyone! Today’s article revisits the Ikharri, a race first featured in Primordial Power, with additional monster stats to challenge your players on underwater adventures.
One of the most prominent threats to the gods during their wars with the primordials was Orrori, the Sunken Lady. Unlike most of the primordials, Orrori took a nurturing approach to her mortal worshippers, aiding them to build great cities of living coral in the Plane of Water. From these aquatic strongholds, they were able to extend their empire into the waters of other planes through a network of portals rivalling even the greatest ones found throughout the multiverse to this day.
Millennia have passed since the Sunken Lady vanished, and the Ikharri, frenzied by their patron’s disappearance, have mostly abandoned these ancient strongholds. However, intrepid adventurers will still find that Ikharri strongholds house potent magical weapons and armor, as well as fierce threats. Some of these monsters and hazards are guardians of the old strongholds, while others are comparatively recent developments, the proverbial hermit crabs entering the strongholds’ empty shells.
Ikharri Warrior
A deep sadness at the loss of their patron primordial has driven the Ikharri to a nomadic way of life. Their massive aquatic citadels stand all but empty, except for the proud few Ikharri who continue to maintain Orrori’s altars and cathedrals. The zeal with which these warriors fight has inspired several mages to devise spells to recreate their ferocity, such as the mask of clay spell.
The Ikharri have been without Orrori’s guidance for generations, but her disappearance still weighs heavily on every Ikharri’s mind, and their waking thoughts are filled with a seemingly supernatural compulsion to try and find the lost primordial. Ikharri warriors are known to flit about the battlefield with uncanny speed, slashing at foes with razor-sharp sickles.
Void Jelly
When a portal is left open continuously for years without any use, its magical surface may congeal, creating a thick membrane between worlds. Under normal circumstances, these portals will either close themselves or the membrane will be pierced. However, the Ikharri empire spanned not only the elemental planes and the prime material plane, but the oceans of worlds which were boiled into nonexistence by the ravages of the warring gods and primordials. These portals to nowhere, abandoned by the displaced Ikharri, eventually began to congeal into Void Jelly.
This substance appears to be a mass of absolute blackness, dotted with starlight. It is attracted to highly animated matter, such as a creature swimming in the Ikharri’s abandoned underwater structures. When it engulfs such a creature, they are transported to a nonexistent destination, where only the most powerful of magics may reach them.
Coral Ghoul
The few adventurers resilient enough to survive looting an Ikharri stronghold have a grim recurring joke, “What’s worse than finding a coral ghoul while diving? Losing track of it.”
The tombs of the Ikharri are surprisingly well-guarded. In lightless, mazelike crypts, coral ghouls ruthlessly hunt living intruders. Aquatic warriors, friend or foe to the Ikharri alike, have been interred with bladed chains engraved with necromantic runes. Over time, coral ghouls harden like the coral around them, leaving them stiff and slow on land but much more difficult to damage or destroy through physical means.