Category: The Dungeon World Tavern: New Monsters

Dessimen (Intelligent, Horde) 3 HP, 2d4 channeling of fire

Dessimen, all thirty six of them, hold roughly the shape of people and all stand four foot two inches (127 cm) tall.  They are composed of magically bound silica dioxide.  Their species was created by a great but mad wizard who sought to use them for research.  He imbued them with great intellect and magical affinity, the better to serve his purposes, but left them dangerously vulnerable to the smallest exposure to moisture, to better enslave them.  Getting wet, or even damp, rapidly hardens their dermis into a crust until they become dry again.  Their magical awareness is bound to their body, and becoming ‘crusted’ alters that, like being trapped in a narcotic high.  Usually a harsh one.  They remain aware, trapped in this state, and it terrifies them to the point that they react to any perceived threat of hydration with immediate violence or some sort of expulsion technique. 

They’ve killed their maker, and their entire culture now resides in a single wide tunnel they’ve created around a magma flow deep in the mountains.  It is unbearably hot in there, allowing them to remain dry, but making most races break into an immediate sweat.  Their location is known to be near the Nature Smelter station of the Dwarven Outpost of Dregglengerd.  Every time someone tunnels over, however, they magically seal the tunnel after dealing with their visitors (peacefully or otherwise)

Dessimen have no concept of privacy.  This comes from living in what most visitors describe as a “communal hallway” and being masters of astral projection. 

They need not eat, drink (obviously), sleep, or age, and are generally trapped in their custom made habitat.  Their culture values art above all things, and have individually and collectively agreed to end their existence once the perfect piece of art is created.  To this end they spend most of their time scouring the world with their awareness, studying art in every form, and working on the sculptures they craft from the silica in their torso cavities.  Those sculptures, the ongoing results of centuries of work by superhumanly devoted master craftsmen, are individually worth thousands upon thousands pieces of gold to the right buyer if retrieved unbroken.

If all the silica of a fallen Dessiman is gathered, the group can recraft it and re-establish it’s awareness.  They know how to make new Dessimen, but know they live an imprisoned existence and do not seek to trap any new beings in it.

The closest things they have to worship is The One, a Dessiman who is voluntarily crusted.  He maintains a spell which allows the moisture on his crust to remain despite the incredible heat of their dwelling, and mentally travels who-knows-where to protect the safety of the group.  When making decisions, lots are cast before him, which he is believed to influence.  In this way, he is their leader…. sort of.

Their technological level is as advanced as the races they monitor from afar, but they are limited to things craftable by the metal they smelt in the magma, the obsidian and other stone of their mountain, via magic, or craftable out of objects brought to them for trade.

Instincts :

* Do whatever it takes to avoid being locked-in

* Understand art

* Summon fire fiends when threatened

* Earn their extinction