Quaggoth

Long, matted white hair covers a quaggoth from head to foot, and it wears nothing else. These hulking humanoids see 120 feet in the dark with infravision and shrug off every kind of poison. Their speech is a stumbling version of the underworld trade tongue, enough for simple ideas only, though brighter individuals pick up scraps of Drow, Duergar or Common.

A tribe stakes out a hunting range and sweeps it constantly; any animal or traveler it notices, adventurers included, will be attacked. In 70% of tribes the quaggoths fight bare-handed, raking with claws for 1-4 damage. The rest wield stone axes or clubs, and those who serve or once served the drow carry fine steel, such as steel greatswords or war axes.

Bring a quaggoth down to a quarter of its hit points or less and it goes berserk, gaining +2 to attack and damage until it dies or no foe remains alive or in view.

One leader, called a jald, commands every 12 quaggoths. It has 3+3 Hit Dice, AC 5 from leather or hides, and +1 to damage. Jalds organize the fight; without one, the pack simply swarms its prey in a mob. A tribe has a 20% chance of including one or two thonots, shamans who use psionics rather than spells to help the tribe fight, flee or heal. A thonot knows telekinesis, control flames and molecular agitation, along with shadow form, cell adjustment, expansion and reduction.

Victorious quaggoths haul every corpse back to the lair to eat, their own fallen included.

These are nomads who shift territory from time to time. In each new range they take a central cave as a lair, leave their treasure there under a small guard, and send the rest out hunting, rotating guards as hunters come back to rest. The drow sometimes capture them for slave labor, using them as sentries and as keepers of their giant spiders.

Females match males in number and ability. A tribe has as many young as adults; half of the young are helpless, while the other half fight at 1+1 HD with adult AC and attacks. Mating happens in any season with no known courtship, and a single cub, occasionally twins, arrives about 10 months later.

Thonots lead what little religion exists, overseeing rites for the day's hunt, for coming of age, and for death, when a brief whistled note sends the soul off before the tribe feasts on the remains.

No one knows where quaggoths came from. One theory holds that they once ruled much of the underworld through war and sacrifice until drow, duergar and other peoples crushed them. Another says they were driven down from the surface, which would explain their hatred of surface dwarves and elves.

Their craft is limited to crude carved stone, though a few make handsome necklaces of wood, bone or stone beads. Nothing frightens a quaggoth, yet larger predators of the depths hunt them as often as they hunt others. Captured young can be raised as guards and servants.