Wednesday 22 February 2012

Enemy Elite: Chudda Feg

This obese cyclops is the bludgeon of the fomorian government. When trouble flares in the crowded slums, Chudda Feg delivers a message spelled out in blood, bile and broken bone. Against the hated eladrin he is a juggernaut, screaming from his trap like a missile flung from a trebuchet.

Chudda was reared in the slave pits of Behol, where his prodigious size and lumpish mind made him a prized gladiator. His fury on the sand caught the eye of the fomorian statesman Magg Ra Bhrune, a rising star in the city’s regime, who took him on as bodyguard. Here he earned a brutish signature: tearing the arms off those who defied his master.

Chudda’s mutations stem from this dark habit. Sent to intimidate a local drug ring, he stumbled into a meeting with their hidden supplier: an Aboleth working for the Fifth Coil. Undaunted, Chudda exacted his orders, tearing off the Aboleth’s barbed tentacles as his prize. When the Fifth Coil came for him, they grafted those same tentacles onto his shoulders, and held open his one eye to the screaming horror of the Far Realm. His mind shattered, Chudda Feg was thrown back to his master as a crude warning of what was to come. Now, his only use is mayhem. He no longer understands the act of killing: instead, it has become a curious reflex. Who knows what madness whorls in his mind now? What horrors that eye has seen?

ABOUT THE ARTIST
This week's artwork comes from Jason Hickey, art director of Cobweb Games and Thoroughly Nice Chap. Jason and his brother Sebastian recently published their own role-playing game, Chronicles of Skin, using money raised from a particularly successful appeal on IndieGoGo. I got my copy through the post the other day, and it's a thing of beauty. Go and buy one for yourself this instant!   

For me, this has been a fantastic opportunity to design to an image, which isn't something I do often. Jason's pic initially made me think Brute, but ultimately those tentacles turned him into a Controller. Forcing motion during combat is one of 4th Edition's strengths, so I thought I'd play to that. I'm also quite proud of his name, which is a homage to two favourite creatures from my youth: the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, and the Lord Weird Slough Feg.  

I threw Chudda Feg against my players over the weekend, giving me a chance to playtest him in earnest. He was pretty nasty, but I felt he needed some tuning. The monster you see to the right is the result of that. 

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