Benthonir

ECOLOGY

Environment any ocean
Organization solitary, pair, cluster (3-10), or swarm (11+)

Endemic to deepest parts of the ocean, benthonir are transparent humanoids with an undifferentiated biology. Each drop of the condensed slime that makes up a benthonir’s body is interchangeable with the rest so long as enough of the body remains viable to maintain life. This extends to the beginning of their lives, with vast fields of benthonir buds growing on the walls of ocean trenches.

Vast schools of benthonir gather in the trenches.

There they worship the krakens they believe created them from the lesser creatures of the trenches and, at the krakens’ behest, wage war on the asquenti realms above. In their pantheon, the krakens only bend knee to the even greater Vulnatatoa.

With their great numbers and ever-shifting form, it comes as no surprise that the benthonir are susceptible to a wide variety of mutations. Few have seen a normal benthonir and fewer still recognize them as kin to the mutants who can be found on the surface.

Thankfully for surface dwellers, the benthonir can only bud in the trenches, leaving the surface as yet uninvaded. Known varieties of benthonirs include the following:

Variants

• Fire Shark benthonirs have red coloration that gathers in scales over their transparent flesh. This appearance grants them a +8 racial bonus to Stealth checks in the tropical waters where endless sargassos of red kelp are present. They are immune to fire rather than cold and often have multiple arms, as the kasatha racial trait.
• Human Born benthonirs look completely human, but lose fast healing and their swim speed, instead gaining a normal 30-foot land speed. They can suppress their bite, claw, and morphic form as a free action. Using these abilities can reveal their nature, but otherwise detecting their benthoniri biology requires advanced scientific facilities and a successful DC 20 Life Science check.
• Human Mimic benthonirs look like incomplete human beings, wrinkled as their flesh constantly melts and reforms, but could be mistaken for elderly humans in poor light. They have a land speed of 30 feet and a swim speed of 20 feet.
• Nemonti benthonirs look like asquenti and can only be distinguished with a cursory medical examination (Medicine DC 10), or by scoring a critical hit on them in combat. They also possess the base asquenti pincer, sonic lance, and sonic pincer attacks rather than the normal claw and bite attacks of a benthonir.