I've been really fascinated about Underdark races and monsters in Dungeons and Dragons lately and came up with this idea of an exiled Duergar Rogue wandering the Underdark with a Mindwitness and their adoptive Flumphs.

A Mindwitness is created when a Mind Flayer colony is able to capture a Beholder and bring it to their brine pool. They serve as a communication hub for the colony, being able to telepathically link up to seven other creatures within 600 feet. The Mindwitness is imprinted with a sense of devotion and submission to its Illithid masters. However, if a Mindwitness is separated from the Mind Flayers, it seeks out other telepathic creatures to tell it what to do, often shifting its worldview and alignment to match those of their new masters. They have been known to ally with demons and other planar creatures, and, in this case, Flumphs.

Flumphs are notable for being the only aberrations in the Underdark (or pretty much anywhere) to be typically lawful-good-aligned. In 5th edition lore, they feed on mental energies from psionic creatures. As benign parasites, they take only as much as they need and the creatures they feed on feel no loss or discomfort from this. The Mindwitness is very clearly psionic, being what is basically a mind flayer beholder. However, whether the Duergar's unique abilities to enlarge and turn invisible are psionic or not is a bit more unclear to me. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse state that Duergar acquired psionic powers due to illithid experimentations back when they were the mind flayers' slaves. However, other sources like the Monster Manual simply state that their innate magical abilities come from their prolonged exposure to the strange magical Faerzress that saturates the Underdark. I am more inclined to trust MTF and MP:MM, as they are more recent sources compared to the Monster Manual.

The Duergar is a Soulknife Rogue. He was originally going to be a Path of Wild Magic Barbarian, infused with the Underdark's magical radiation known as Faerzress, but my friend pointed out that I make too many Barbarian characters so I went with a Rogue instead. The Rogue ended up being a better fit for the group because of the Soulknife's psionic and telepathic abilities. It also has some basis in Duergar culture because of the Duergar Soulblade, which I assume to be a sort of conceptual precursor the the playable Soulknife Rogue subclass. It is weird though that the description for the Soulknife has no mention of the Duergar Soulblade.

In my mind, the Duergar was exiled from his kin, like many other Duergar adventurers. He braved the dangers of the Underdark alone until he encountered the cloister of Flumphs who offered to travel with him. Traversing the Underdark with a formidable ally like the Mindwitness proved effective, and the Flumphs made for decent, if somewhat annoyingly moralizing, company. He is now loyal and protective of his new "clan".

When this "party" encounters combat, I imagine that the Mindwitness would take on a more supportive role while the Duergar deals most of the damage. The Mindwitness would first try to slow down their opponents with its many eye rays while the Flumphs hide behind it. Five of the Mindwitness's six eye rays seem good for crowd-controlling opponents, and it can make three eye ray attacks in its turn. Then the Duergar Rogue would sneak in and attack with his psychic blades.

The D&D Flumphs' designs varied a lot in their many portrayals over the years, but the design I decided on was a combination of their depictions in Magic: The Gathering card art and the 5e Monster Manual. I basically just copied the 5e art for the Mindwitness, with some minor tweaks in the posing of the tentacles and eye stalks. The Duergar's outfit is based on the Studded Leather Armour from Baldur's Gate 3, and his soul knife is referenced from the 5e art for the Duergar Soulblade. Lastly, the background is based on Baldur's Gate 3's depiction of the Underdark.

Not furry but I decided to post here anyway because I like how it came out. [2024/08/07]