What are some misunderstood creatures in your setting?

What are some misunderstood creatures in your setting?
Hard Mode: Introduce creatures that are misunderstood by your session's party as well.

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My players once tried to genocide an ancient but primitive underwater race, all because they just so happened to learn of their tradition of taking slaves. The thing is, this race was actually very peaceful and the "slaves" they took were often given as spouses. Plus, if a slave wasn't an agreeable marriage candidate, they'd simply return them to the surface in most cases.

They really had a hard time of it and eventually gave up trying to kill them, though that was mostly due to the fact that they couldn't easily traverse the deeper parts of the continental shelf where the race primarily resided. All attempts to antagonize them fell short, as well.

Some players can be pretty retarded sometimes with how hard they break one's immersion in a setting.

Got those lil guys all over our basement. They are awesome at killing ants and other pests. Plus watching them run is cool; they are pretty fucking fast.

>introduce sex slavers that raid the surface
>totally peaceful
>but you cant rape wives, user
>party tries to smite this evil no matter the odds

Yeah man, what a dumb group of players. Did you explain to them their characters are actually super cool with slavery?

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Although the rapidly reproducing water fleas known as workshop lice may seem annoying, they inadvertently sustain many magical creatures. By converting stray mana into nutrients and reproducing like mad, they actually distribute magic throughout the ecosystem in a form of biomagnification. The water fleas are eaten by their predators, who are eaten by other creatures in turn, and somewhere along the way you start getting frogs with wild magic and firebreathing skunks.

No, I was ultimately fine with their stance, since that's how they wanted to play it. I just tried to get them to understand that slavery — in any form — wasn't all that uncommon in the setting.

They gathered more information on the slaver race from a nearby coastal town after they first learned about them. The people there were pretty much fine with the race's practices since they were relatively reclusive otherwise and, as I said, most of the people that didn't want to become one of their spouses after the fact were usually freed and sent back up to the surface. The people in the town basically saw it as an unspoken "agreement", of sorts.

The taken spouses weren't sex slaves, by the by, and were actually treated very well, though there was no way for the players to know or confirm that without becoming one themselves, so they thought it was something similar to your assumption, as well. Either way, after only managing to kill a few of this race's lower caste — who were the true slaves and weren't allowed to take people from the surface as the upper caste did, the players basically settled on the idea that they could no longer help the poor, deluded people of the nearby town and fucked off to do more adventuring.

WTF is that bug, user?

Common house centipede.

I know house centipedes are harmless to humans and helpful in fighting pests, but they just creep me out in such a deeply ingrained level that I can't stand them. Bleh

That isn’t really how slavery was viewed historically but of course DnD is for simpletons

black people

kek

What the hell is that cutie?

Scutigera, a sort of centipede.

the females have larger back legs, and they do care a mild poison that can be painful to humans, but ultimately they will run at all chances and they eat spiders.

Can I pet its mandibles?

ISHYGDDT
Is useful, but a bit venomous. Live and let live.

It would be extremely painful

Sharks.
No.
They are not sea orcs.
They are very dumb.
Very dumb and an adorable but also deadly.
Except the goblin shark.
Nobody likes him.
And the Bullshark, the pitbull of the shark species.

Ghouls

The dwarven mushroom farm was poisoned by hags, transforming the populace into frenzied zombie like creatures. They were mostly driven to eat more mushrooms, but reacted to light sources violently.

PCs show up to what is supposed to be a thriving city only to find it a madhouse, so they kill half the populace, take the loot and head off to the next town.

>what humans think fey are:
Murderous, mysterious, ageless, magically-powerful beings that inhabit wild areas between human settlements. Will kill humans who encroach on their territory without hesitation or mercy. It's usually best not to stray too far from human settlements without backup, such as artillery fire.

>what fey actually are
Mysterious, ageless, magically-powerful beings that inhabit wild areas between human settlements. They prefer to avoid human contact but may fight if they feel threatened or in self-defense, such as by humans who frequently shoot at them on sight. Extremely sensitive to environmental pollution and think the relatively-recent human trend of polluting factories and power plants are a travesty. Strangely, despite almost all of human history being filled with myths and stories of violent fey, almost every fey the party have met seem pretty chill or at least willing to negotiate, and more and more humans are noticing that as well. They also, typically to the confusion of humans, insist that fairies are a distinct race and not fey.

>what fairies actually are
Murderous, mysterious, ageless, magically-powerful beings that inhabit wild areas between human settlements. Will kill outsiders, human or fey, who encroach on their territory without hesitation or mercy. It's usually best not to stray too close to fairy lands without backup, such as artillery fire.

>try to get kids age 8-14 into gaming
>simple quest to kill a monster that has been eating all the cows
>players "get lost" in the forest despite basicly playing freeform
>have goblin hunter show up to give them clues on the beast
>being new players, they panic and attack it
>players abbandon quest and start hunting down goblins

In hindsight I shouldn't have had a non-human show up that early, but that was the first pic available. Also why the boss of the campaing was a eight-limbed blind dragon bleeding lava.

Still, seeing an 8 year old girl so gleefully enaging in genocide was somewhat concerning.

>Still, seeing an 8 year old girl so gleefully enaging in genocide was somewhat concerning.
That's just the magic of tabletop gaming, user.

Sounds like you might not have given your players enough credit. Maybe they just wanted a "lost in the forest" adventure and went to make one happen? If that segment was "basically freeform" then it must've been something they tried for - which should be encouraged, I think, seeing a TTRPG as an open world where the party can choose where to go and what to do rather than a video game where you're given a quest and complete it.

The girl is two steps ahead of you.
She got the goblins are stealing cows, and blaming some "monster" in the forest.
Yeah, sure thing little fuckers.

You're a big guy.

Goblins.

This didn't happen to be near Innsmouth, did it?

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4 u

>Bloodroot
A rubbery fleshed perrenial plant from another dimension. Sustains itself on ambient Mana and when introduced to the material plane, siphons life energy as well, reducing earth to a sterile blackened dust. If grown over a corpse, soulstuff is leeched from the spirit realm as well, and the species mutates into a more magically resonant plant. The heart of the mundane plants are inert, but mutant forms grow concentrated Mana stones that can be destructively harvested.

The plant blood can be collected and distilled with certain alchemical rites, creating a potential druglike brew. Highly nutritious and absolutely physiologically addictive, the sustaining life magic suffuses consumers. It also has the side effect of breaking down natural will power, amplified if the the imbiber succumbs to addiction, and worse so with withdrawl...

In the end, the players invaded a dying kingdom suffused with the plant. Killed every mutated specimin they encountered. Cursed it's name when they discovered the BloodWine. When the magic superweapon went off in their hands, they made sure to include the root as a target.

Already exists senpai- is literally ginger vampire crack.

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Girls