In Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1803), Sir Walter Scott said of the shellycoat, "he seemed to be decked with marine productions; and, in particular, with shells, whose clattering announced his approach." From the tales recorded about shellycoats by Scottish folklorists, their pranks could range from the mischievous to the deadly. Scott says that they shellycoat is "a freakish spirit, who delights rather to perplex and frighten mankind, than to serve, or seriously hurt them." He goes on to describe one of the creature's pranks: calling out to a pair of travelers from a river, pretending to be a drowning person in need of aid. The shellycoat led them upriver all night until they arrived at the source of the waters high in the mountains, only to laugh uproariously at the would-be rescuers and their wasted effort. But in 1948, folklorist Lewis Spence described the shellycoat as "gigantic, swift, malignant, delighting in blood and violence." One tale from Leith describes how a shellycoat seized a local man and threw him around until he died from the trauma. So we have a picture of the shellycoat as both a prankster and a brutal murderer, both aspects of which I have chosen to include in the creature statted up below.
As with so many spirits and creatures of local folklore, the shellycoat suffered from innumerable variations, mutations, and conflations with other myths and legends across centuries of oral tradition until stories of the creature were finally recorded in the modern era. One tale of the shellycoat comes to us from Ettrick Water, Selkirkshire, recorded in Allan Ramsay's Poems in 1721:
One of those frightful Spectres the ignorant People are terrified at, and tell us strange Stories of; that they are clothed with a Coat of Shells, which make a horrid rattling, that they'll be sure to destroy one, if he gets not a running Water between him and it...The rattling coat of shells is there, but in this story the shellycoat apparently cannot cross running water - not an uncommon weakness for a bogeyman, but odd for a creature that is attested in other sources as dwelling in the water. It is also said in some stories that the shellycoat became powerless if it took off its shell-coat - a trait probably borrowed from stories of selkies. I have retained that aspect of the shellycoat because of the emphasis in puts on the creature's shell-armor, and because it sets up a combat where the adventurers are trying to sunder the shellycoat's armor before going in for the kill.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.
This damp, gray-skinned humanoid wears a
coat of rattling seashells and a puckish grin
Shellycoat CR 4
XP 1,200
CN Medium fey
(aquatic)
Init +2; Senses low-light vision; Perception +9
DEFENSE
AC 20, touch 12, flat-footed 18 (+2
Dex, +8 armor)
hp 39 (6d6+18)
Fort +5, Ref +7, Will +5
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft., swim 20 ft.
Melee +1 greatclub +8 (1d10+7)
Ranged javelin +5 (1d6+4) 30ft. or masterwork net +6 (entangle) 10ft.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th)
1/day – ghost
sound (DC 12), ventriloquism (DC
13)
3/day – cause
fear (DC 13)
STATISTICS
Str 18, Dex 15, Con 16, Int 9, Wis 11, Cha 14
Base Atk +3; CMB +7 (+9 grapple); CMD
19
Feats Improved Grapple, Improved
Unarmed Strike, Power Attack
Skills Bluff +11, Diplomacy +7,
Disguise +7, Knowledge (geography) +3, Knowledge (local) +6, Knowledge (nature)
+3, Perception +9, Sense Motive +5, Stealth -6, Swim +21
Languages language
SQ amphibious, shell armor
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Shell Armor (Su)
The
shellycoat wears a coat of overlapping seashells. While equipped by the shellycoat, these
shells grant an armor bonus of +8, a maximum dex of +3, an armor check penalty
of -4, and an arcane spell failure chance of 0%; the armor check penalty does
not apply to Swim checks but applies double to Stealth checks. The armor has a hardness of 2 and 25 hit
points. The shell armor also empowers
the shellycoat, granting it a +4 bonus to Strength (included in the stats
above). If the shell armor gains the
broken condition, this Strength bonus is reduced to +2, and the Strength bonus
is lost of the armor is destroyed. It
takes a shellycoat 24 hours to create a new coat of shells. This shell armor has no effect when worn by
any creature other than a shellycoat.
ECOLOGY
Environment cold or temperate swamps/marshes
and coast, rivers/lakes
Organization solitary, pair, gang (3-6)
Treasure standard (3 javelins,
masterwork net, +1 greatclub, other treasure)
Shellycoats
are pale, grey-skinned humanoids with sodden black hair and mischievous
faces. They are named after their
trademark coats of shells, which rattle as they move and which make effective
armor in battle. They are malicious
tricksters that haunt the shores of seas and lakes and the banks of
rivers. A favorite trick of the
shellycoat is to use ventriloquism to
fool passers-by into thinking that someone is drowning, then ambushing them if
they try to lend aid. It considers these
attacks ‘pranks’, but if angered the shellycoat will lash out with brute
strength, pulverizing the target of its ire or, if possible, drowning them in
earnest. Because of their thick armor
and thuggish demeanor, shellycoats are sometimes hired as bodyguards or
soldiers by unseelie fey.
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The information and stories I referenced about shellycoats come to me via The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends by Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill. Inspiration also came from Jack, the Giant Killer by Charles De Lint, a fantasy novel about Old World fey living in late-1980s Canada.
-your polyplacophoran d20 despot
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