Red slaad

Red slaadi, also known as blood slaads, were the most common members of the slaad race. They were brutish bullies of low status used by more powerful slaadi as thugs and were quick to spill blood out of anger, hunger, or just for fun.

Description
Red slaadi were tall bipeds that weighed approximately, resembling roughly humanoid, almost neckless toads with huge, flat heads. Their skin was mostly dull red with specks of gray, lighter around their undersides and darker along their backs, and occasionally covered by loincloths. Both their fingers and hands were strangely large and, like their feet, ended in claws.

Personality
Red slaadi were short-tempered and surly on top of being somewhat unintelligent.

Abilities
Despite being the weakest of slaads, red slaads were still as strong as veteran warriors, able to rip others apart with nothing but their teeth and claws. They could unleash a frighteningly loud croak that left those nearby stunned for several seconds and were reported to be capable of summoning one or two other red slaadi if needed.

Combat
Red slaadi were, as one might expect from beings of chaos, uncoordinated in their attacks, the extent of their cooperative ability being their tendency to gang up on and intimidate smaller groups of creatures before viciously savaging them. Unexpectedly however, they were also utterly predictable, quickly attacking whenever provoked (or when hungry) and fighting until they or their enemy were defeated. They moved faster when hopping and often leapt into battle, pouncing on as many foes as possible before croaking in order to keep nearby enemies still. Afterwards, they repeatedly bit into their prey until able to pounce again.

Society
Red slaadi preferred to be wander alone, often creating lairs on other planes to escape the tyrannical behavior of more powerful slaadi from Limbo. Typically they were only found together when compelled by some form of greater power, moving in gangs with as few as three members and in packs with somewhere between 6-18 members. They were often sent to the Material Plane on missions for their masters, typically to abduct human slaves.

Ecology
Despite passionately hating each other, red slaads and blue slaads were irrevocably tied together by their reproductive cycles, instinctually driven to produce offspring that, unfortunately for them, were slaad of the rival color. Red slaads spawned blue slaads and vice versa, but after conception the spawn was raised by the opposing variety.

Biology
Red slaadi possessed glands under each of their claws and they occasionally and imperceptibly implanted tiny egg-pellets into those they clawed. They injected them into the flesh of humanoid hosts, an inexact procedure only certain to work if the victim was unconscious, and after doing so the egg was immediately renewed, allowing them to inject eggs into others. Hosts could only house one developing slaad at a time, and after injection the pellet moved through the victim's body until reaching the chest cavity,   although some reports claimed they could come from the skull. Reported gestation times varied widely, ranging from three hours to three months, and twenty-four hours before the birth, the victim was struck extremely ill both physically and mentally.



At the end, the baby blue slaad, existing at that point as a tadpole, then burst from the victim after eating their vital organs, consumed the rest of the body and then sought out more meat. If the host had been a capable arcane spellcaster, or possibly just an otherwise skilled or powerful being, the tadpole might instead be a green slaad. The young slaad would quickly develop in under twenty-four hours and become fully self-sufficient in a few years. Red slaadi appeared as the result of chaos phage, a disease similar to lycanthropy that spread through blue slaadi hooks and transformed victims into them.

The egg gestation process could be stopped using spells that cured disease, removed curses, restored vitality, or affected poisons, thus disintegrating the spawn, or with skilled medical care, and the egg could be found with a detect evil spell. Realizing this, slaadi often kidnapped victims, bringing them to or creating prison camps to keep them in until the unborn slaadi was brought to term. Even beings as mighty as pit fiends could be used as hosts for red slaad eggs, although if the egg ended up deformed somehow it could cripple the slaad when it hatched.

Spawning Stone
During the red slaadi breeding season, their songs around the Spawning Stone could be heard for miles around. They typically had trouble forcing the death slaadi to leave the Stone since they surrounded the area with deadly acid fog that made the area temporarily uninhabitable. Eventually the red slaadi hordes managed to run both them and the gray slaads off, presumably because not even they were immune to the horrific egg gestation process.

Uses
Weaker wish spells could be used to extract a slaad egg, leaving it intact but neutralized, but a true wish spell could be used to obtain it and use it afterwards. The pellet could be enchanted in order to create a charm capable of controlling the slaad it came from even more effectively than their forehead symbol, although the process for making it required a limited wish and spirit wrack spell along with 6,000 gold pieces and three months to forge it.

Subraces
When red slaadi sustained themselves off of Elemental Chaos for too long, they risked transforming themselves into juggernauts, giant red slaads that were even more destructive and violent than their typical counterparts. Such slaads dragged back targets trying to escape and gleefully brutalized them in displays of wanton ruthlessness.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Dungeon #84, "The Harrowing" • Waterdeep: Dragon Heist • Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights • Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone • Neverwinter Nights: Tyrants of the Moonsea
 * Board Games
 * Betrayal at Baldur's Gate
 * Card Games
 * Dragonfire
 * Organized Play & Licensed Adventures
 * Dark Pyramid of Sorcerer's Isle • Return to the Glory