The Dread¶
"The mind of Abols is so foreign that their telepathic contact with other races often causes insanity and madness." — from the Namakan rune-lore of the Dread (S257)
The Dread are the alien races of the deep Void: the tentacled Cthuls, the insect-like Umbars, the many-eyed Tyrax and the worm-like Abols. They are not demons and not undead. The newest cosmology counts them among the Outsiders, beings from beyond Terrun's planes: "Only a handful of beings have mastered the traversal of the Void. These visit Terrun, set up outposts and harvest Terrun's resources for their own interests" (S001). The Namakan runecasters of the Fifth Age, who learned to call them, named them the Dread and their home the Yawning Void, and it is from their rune-lore that most of what is known comes (S257). The Cthul, the most studied of the four, have a page of their own; the other three families are described here.
Also called: the Dread Horrors (S257); Outsiders (S001); the races of the Yawning Void, the Yawning Madness or the Yawning Maw, three names the rune-lore uses for the same place (S257).
The four families¶
The rune-lore divides the Dread into four families, each with its own cast of mind and its own way of killing (S257).
Cthuls¶
"The Cthuls are an ancient family of organisms whose origins are uncertain. It is known that they inhabit many layers of the Yawning Void and they are one of the most prolific Dread Races. Cthuls are strongly attuned to Domination typed Psionics. In form, most Cthulic creatures have tentacles" (S257): blood-red tentacles that blight, purplish-black ones that rot, great dark green and brown ones that crush, and "thin long white rubbery" mindeater tentacles that drain reason and will until "the target's mind collapses and they are brain-dead (permanent)" (S257). See Cthul.
Umbars¶
"The Umbars are the most prolific Dread family. They are less commonly seen outside the Yawning Void due to the fact they are of lower intelligence than most of the other Dread. This gives them a strong natural resistance to psionics but they are not often able to escape the Yawning Maw without outside assistance. The Umbars own psionic abilities often cause Confusion, Fear, Slowing and other mentally suppressive effects. In form, they are similar to giant insects with hard exoskeletons and multiple appendages" (S257). The Otyughs and the Umber Hulks are Umbars (S257). Their weapons are the pinch of a claw, a telepathic clicking that confuses, a stinger, a telepathic screech "that drives fear into the heart of sentient creatures," and a scythe-shaped limb (S257). An Umber Hulk met in the Sancturi campaign stood nine feet tall (S176).
Tyrax¶
"The Tyrax are made up of all the species of Beholders as well as many other aberrations that feature great maws and eyestalks. Their telekinetic powers are unrivalled and many can simultaneously focus on multiple targets at once" (S257). Their eyestalks are their arsenal and their weakness, each with a ray of its own: charm, paralysis, fear, slowing, enervation, telekinesis, sleep, petrification, disintegration and death (S257).
Abols¶
"The Abols are an ancient race born in the Yawning Madness. They appear as great worms and eels which can swim through water, air and space. Aboleths are highly intelligent and are the dominant subrace. Their oldest members claim to have living memory of the birth of almost every race in the universe" (S257). Where Abols cross they leave Abolean things behind them: a mindworm, "a small floating semi translucent worm creature" that drains thought; an ooze, "a puddle of dark opaque liquid" that climbs its victims and digests them, so that "a creature that dies to the ooze turns into a free-moving ooze"; lightning pods of "purple chained lightning"; and telepathy pods whose presence alone drives the mind down toward permanent madness, "vegetable, lunatic, psychotic confusion … suicidal violence" (S257). In play the Sancturi companions met Abolean oozes (S171), an Abolean "Floating Octopus," an "Abolean Riftcrab" with "16 legs, 4 tentacle arms" (S201), and heard that an Abolean Soul Reaper of terrible power was "on the loose in Brusau" (S191).
Gates and rifts¶
The Dread do not wander onto Terrun by accident. The rune-lore of the Namakan runecasters (Namakan Runecasting) describes how they are drawn: a Zone of Dread "aligns the area with a subplane of the Yawning Madness, allowing certain types of The Dread to partially cross through," so that tentacles, stalks, worms and pods manifest at a chosen spot, and "the Dread Effects will not attack the object the rune is attached to since they can sense this could interrupt their fun" (S257). A Dread Gate "spawns a void rift through which pour Dread creatures. These creatures are not under your control, and the rift can only be closed by slaying the most powerful dread present (known as the rift keeper)" (S257). A Dreadlord rune makes its bearer "appear as a dread of a specific type (Abols, Tyrax, Umbars or Cthuls) to other Dread creatures," which requires "the soul of the type of Dread creature as a reagent"; kin will take the bearer for an ally, "for other types, it will make them automatic enemies of high priority" (S257). The Sancturi campaign found a Dread Gate powered by a "Cube of Portals" beneath the Tomb of Paragons (S177). The runes themselves are kept under Mechanics (Ascension and Dread Forms).
Demons can wear the Dread. The Fourth Age reference lists Cthul, Abol and Tyrax among the hosts a demon may possess, bodies that hold a great deal of essence but grow into no demonic form (S331); see Demonic Forms.
Merging mortals and Dread¶
The darkest of the Namakan arts fuse the two. The Dreadborne rune merges a Dread soul into a living creature, which then "begin[s] a painful transformation over the next days which will require nearly constant healing for it to survive," and each day risks going "irrevocably insane" (S257). The Soulforged Abomination works the other way, attaching mortal souls to a living Dread; in the contest of wills that follows, "if the Dread wins, the soul is merged (destroyed) with the dread. If one of the mortal souls wins, then the Dread gains one of their skills," and a mortal who wins often enough "becomes the prime driver (in control of the Dread)" (S257).
The priests of Namaka put this to use. A "deeply buried Aquitanian complex just north of Alghert in the mountains" was "used by Namakan priests as a site for Dread (Umber) experiments until they lost control" (S176); and a hybrid of "Dread(Cthul) & Dwarrow DNA," with "minor psionics," "simple shapeshifting," a parasite "consuming a host," in appearance "deformed small ugly bear," was something "Khardas tried to destroy" (S167).
Earlier accounts¶
The rune-lore of the Dread is itself Fifth Age material, and the one earlier account of any Dread race is the older Cthul overview, on Cthul. The Hollow-lore of the same years names a Land of a Thousand Eyes among the Abyssal biomes (S156), but does not connect it to the Tyrax.
Gap
The sources do not say what the Dread want of Terrun beyond "harvest Terrun's resources," how the four families regard one another, or whether any Dread live on Terrun permanently rather than through gates and outposts.
In Play¶
The Dread are met in two ways: as the things that pour from a Namakan gate, tentacle and eyestalk and pod, with a rift keeper that must die before the gate closes (S257); or as the slow horror of an outpost, an Elder Brain's thralls or an Abolean ooze in a flooded cavern. The Sancturi companions learned to sort what they met by family, "Cthulic, Tyraxian, Abolean, Umbric" (S174). Against the Tyrax, strike the stalks. Against the Abols, do not listen: their very thoughts cause madness.