Wiggle

Hurwaeti are an old humanoid people distantly related to lizard men and sahuagin. Their dark olive-green hide is covered in tiny, hard, shiny scales so fine the skin looks smooth and glossy, and many observers mistake that sheen for slime. They have long, froglike legs, webbed hands and feet, and gnomish faces: large ears, sharp noses, long pointed chins. Adults sport thin beards and coarse topknots of hair; the very old grow long beards, thick tufts and bushy brows. They stand 6 to 7 feet tall, weigh 190 to 230 pounds and can live 300 years.

Their dress is simple: long, brightly colored loincloths, plus belts and packs for gear. They loathe lizard man body paint but love jewelry, especially big ceramic or shell earrings, armbands and bangles on wrists and ankles.

Hurwaeti like big shields and swords up close and slings or javelins at range. They are neutral with lawful leanings and reliably follow orders. A fully equipped hurwaet can jump 8 feet up or 20 feet across, which makes them ideal boarders, and teamed with swooping deck apes they make nearly unstoppable boarding parties. Carrying a shield lowers their AC by 1; armor only helps if it brings their AC to 4 or better.

Once per day each adult may produce a fog cloud, cast at 9th level. Facing defeat, a group blankets itself in fog to hide and confuse foes, then slips away, regroups for a counterattack, or even uses the cover to board the enemy vessel.

Long ago the hurwaeti ruled a great starfaring realm that seeded many systems with art, civilization and a philosophy of discipline and selflessness. An ancient war shattered it and killed their brightest. Cut-off colonists slowly degenerated into the swamp and salt wiggles, while the surviving spacefarers became poor wanderers content to make a living for themselves and their tribes. They share the common hatred of web-eel slavers and are just as hostile to gazer tyrants and mind reavers, so scholars suspect the old war was fought against all three at once; the hurwaeti will not say. A hurwaet never surrenders to any of these races, or to any ship that might carry them, and usually fights doggedly to the death rather than be captured.

Every tribe is a collection of clans, and each clan answers to an elder. The senior elder, usually the oldest and richest, governs the tribe and settles every internal dispute; when a chief dies the clan elders elect a successor. Young hurwaeti win wealth and standing by serving on clan ships or striking out alone. Their own archaic language is full of hisses, clicks and tangled grammar that few humans or demihumans can ever pronounce, though lizard men pick it up easily. They also speak the lizard man tongue and whatever language dominates their home system.

Hurwaeti are agreeable and peaceful, if a little greedy: nobody gets anything from one for free. All adults are skilled spacers, and they are prized as crew because their fog cloud can refresh a ship's air and because they obey orders and leap between hulls in a fight. Those without ships hire on in small groups of the same sex and age who live and work together. Mistreat one and the whole group complains; push them too far and they all leave at the next port, though honor keeps them from mutiny.

These groups earn money for the tribe and also hunt for mates. Whenever two such groups of opposite sex cross paths, a 35% chance exists that they trade two or more members, whatever their employers think. They finish their voyages unless badly treated, then quit, refuse further work and go home with their new mates. About 5% of groups sign on specifically to find mates and will endure any hardship until they do; when they meet a suitable group they swap members 60% of the time, after which they put up with nothing. More than one tyrannical captain has thought he had the perfect crew until a single shore leave left him short-handed.

Ship-owning hurwaeti power their craft with linked series starhelms. They build the same designs as lizard men when they build at all, but most of their ships are bought or salvaged, battered-looking patchwork hulls that are in fact well maintained. About 5% of owners are pirates, and they prey almost only on web-eel slaver, mind reaver and gazer tyrant space; their pirate ships always carry six series starhelms. Most ships cruise the void between worlds looking for wrecks, with a fondness for asteroid fields full of asteroid-mimicking devourers, where crews pluck debris off the monsters on tethers just long enough to leap clear if a hungry mouth opens. They readily help any non-hostile ship in dangerous space, for a fee. A few tribes trade in any profitable cargo, often turning raw goods into textiles, paints, dyes and jewelry aboard ship. A typical hurwaet ship carries its normal crew plus 1d6 heavy hurwaet troops in plate mail with two-handed swords and long bows, and for magical defense one or two spellcasters, clerics or mages of levels 2-5, who may be lizard men, humans or demihumans.

Hurwaeti prefer seafood, fresh or preserved, but are omnivores able to eat anything a human can plus some foods a human would find revolting. Like their reptilian cousins they lay eggs, but the father scoops each clutch up the moment it is laid and carries it in an abdominal pouch for roughly eight months until hatching, which makes it hard for outsiders to tell the sexes apart.

These degenerate hurwaeti live as tribal hunters or sometimes bandits. They fight with big clubs and wood or hide shields, and their long legs deliver vicious kicks; they are nimble enough to combine weapon and kicks without penalty. Underwater, where clubs are useless, they kick twice. For missiles each carries slings, javelins or darts (equal chance of each). They swim superbly and wriggle effortlessly through quicksand, mud, weeds and similar watery obstacles, which makes their ambushes deadly to land dwellers. Their villages produce a few crafts such as baskets, nets, pots and jewelry, and if dealt with from a position of strength they will swap these, along with fish and game, for glass beads, tools and similar crafted wares. They breed like hurwaeti, but 2% of their young hatch as bigger, nastier salt wiggles that usually eat their siblings, often kill the brooding father, and scurry off to live alone.

The largest and most degraded branch shares the sahuagin's aggression, greed and evil cunning. Each is a huge brute with a gaping, toothy mouth and powerful limbs, often mistaken for a scrag and every bit as dangerous, though it does not regenerate. It uses no weapons, fighting with teeth and claws, and if both claws hit it rends for an extra 1d4+4 damage. Salt wiggles make nothing and prefer fighting to trading, but they hire on with sahuagin, evil ray-folk of the deep, krakens, other evil sea creatures, pirates or coastal humans for pay or a share of the loot. They keep their bargains but always side with whichever local power looks strongest. They hide their eggs in sunny, weedy shallows and assign guards, not necessarily the parents, who then raise and teach the young. Any salt wiggle hatched among swamp wiggles is driven out or slain. Those that cannot reach salt water before adulthood haunt rivers and lakes with plenty of victims, often lairing under lonely bridges and demanding tolls; locals call them bridge trolls.