Tso

Tso are bigger, stronger kin of the web-eel slavers, about as tall as a grown human. The body is spidery, with eight insectile limbs and a swollen abdomen; a long snakelike neck rises from the thorax to an eel's head lined with needle teeth. They walk mostly on the rear legs, keeping the smaller front limbs for handling things. They are hairless, armored in glossy chitin, with leathery black skin at the joints, neck and head.

Tso fight competently but are cowards who let slaves do the work. A brood keeps two to three times its own number in charmed guards and servants. About 75% are humans from the planes or prime worlds, zerathi, tieflings or aasimar; the rest are rarer beings such as lesser fiends, clockwork drones and other unusual planar creatures. Slaves fight to the death on command, but a sensible tso protects its property rather than wasting it.

Cornered, a tso is surprisingly dangerous: two upper claws for 1d4 each, a bite for 1d8, and its second pair of limbs wielding a two-handed polearm or staff, or a weapon and shield that improves its AC to 0. The bite is venomous; a failed save vs. poison means 1d10 extra damage and paralysis for 1d4 turns.

Its enslaving touch works like an extremely strong charm. The tso must touch the target and make no other attack that round, and the victim saves vs. spell at -2 or becomes a willing servant. The victim's Intelligence counts as half for how often it gets to save again.

Every tso is also a mage of 2nd to 5th level (1d4+1), favoring information, deception and capture: phantasmal force and detect invisibility beat burning hands or acid arrow in their view. Working together, a group casts at the level of its best mage plus one per helper, so a 5th-level tso with six assistants casts as an 11th-level wizard, and the leader may pick any spell of that level whether memorized or not. Casting time grows tenfold, so a casting time of 7 takes 7 rounds. Outsiders cannot decipher this alien approach to magic. The enchantment that flies a spider-ship needs at least 13 tso.

Tso are rare and intensely social; a lone one never strays far from its brood, and any detachment left behind on business numbers at least three, each with its personal servants. A brood travels aboard a spider-shaped flying ship of unique design, able to sail the lawful planes, though they are unwelcome in the most heavenly realms.

Their other passion is greed. A brood will contract for nearly anything: slaves, contraband, honest trade, kidnapping, arson, murder. If an archdevil of the hells covets a certain kind of gem, the tso will sign with the baatezu to deliver, then obtain the gems by any means, preferably without paying. Their contracts are masterpieces of buried clauses and subcontracts, and they figure anyone who signs without reading deserves to be fleeced; tso and baatezu haggling is a sight to see. Yet they are reliable in one way: they do nothing without an ironclad contract.

The ship's captain is the eldest and strongest, usually the best sorcerer, sometimes the owner of the mightiest slave. Each tso tallies its standing carefully by riches, personal might, and how many slaves it owns and how good they are, and orders flow downward without question.

When a tso grows old enough, the brood paralyzes it to begin a radical transformation. The immobile parent gorges without pause for 8 to 10 weeks, and then 3 to 5 young burst out, killing it. Unlike web-eel slaver young, these emerge already sentient, small copies of the parent, and siblings usually stay close for life. Elders raise them, and within a year they join the hierarchy at the bottom.

A brood that outgrows its ship first sends off trading parties, but eventually it must split and build a new vessel, a dangerous season of months of scheming over who stays and who leaves.