Wamp

Wamp

(Creature)

Type

Aberration

CR

6

Environment

Any (ruins or graveyards)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: Dreams of the Yellow King, pg(s). 90–91

Ⅰ

Wamps are sapient carrion-eating aberrations who live in dead cities of the Dreamlands.

Appearance

Wamps resemble nine-legged, gray-skinned arthropods whose legs end in brilliant red webbed feet. A wamp's face consists of a pig's nose and bat's mouth, but no eyes. The thorax of a wamp is covered in dirty, bristly white fur. The average wamp is 4 feet in diameter, 3 feet long, and has a leg span of 8 feet and weighs 300 pounds, but rumours of colossal wamps persist. Wamps typically smell of rotting flesh.

Ecology

Wamps are obligate carrion feeders and cannot digest fresh meat. Their favoured prey is rotting undead, and they can trick undead into thinking that the wamps themselves are also undead, although intelligent undead are rarely fooled for long. Wamps are willing to kill living prey but never eat them immediately, instead preferring to drag the corpses back to their lair to fester.

When a wamp feeds on a sufficiently large corpse, it will deposit hundreds of eggs inside it. Wamps are always ravenous and rarely leave enough food for their unborn offspring; if a corpse is mostly uneaten, the eggs will fertilise and begin to consume each other, eventually hatching into a single juvenile watermelon-sized wamp, which matures within hours. Wamps can live for centuries, but are usually killed before that.

Despite their disgusting form, wamps are on average smarter than humans. Despite their lack of eyes, they can see the natural decay of all solidity, allowing them to read books or observe sculptures.

Wamps are disease-transmitting creatures, with a medical journal confirming corpsepox, ghoul fever, and zombie rot all being present in the bite of a wamp.

Society

Wamps dwell in dead cities or undead-haunted graveyards in the Dreamlands, where there are numerous cultural relics for them to study. They are willing to brag about the results of their research to visitors, but scholars who consult wamps are advised to not associate with them for long or risk becoming their meal. In the Universe, wamps sometimes congregate in large numbers around gravesites and necropolises.

Most wamps become sorcerers, psychics, rogues, bards, or clerics of Tsathoggua. Since it is difficult to manipulate objects with their feet, wamps that become arcane spellcasters always try to find ways to eschew casting materials.

In the Great Beyond

This section contains spoilers for the following products: an encounter in Dreams of the Yellow King.
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Around 4716 AR, wamps arrived to Arventon, a largely abandoned city in the Dreamlands, and took control of its cemetery to gorge themselves on the bodies within.

References

Paizo used wamps in the Strange Aeons Pathfinder Adventure Path under license from Chaosium Inc.

External links

• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (real-world source) on Wikipedia
• "The Abominations of Yondo" (real-world inspiration) on Wikipedia