Thoughts on Kuo-Toa

Kuo-Toa are tepid diaper-wearing rip-offs of Deep Ones, at least the 1e version were. Presumably part of this was for legal reasons or in some way associated with the stepping on toes incident between TSR and Chaosium in the 1e Deities & Demigods. The part about the diapers in the Fiend Folio picture is harder to explain, I understand the S&M harnesses they have in the Shrine of the Kua-Toa but why would Kuo-Toa wear diapers or shorts or a loan cloth or whatever. Was TSR being coy about if the things had external genitalia or not? Further messing them up they were placed deep underground in the D series of modules. Excuse me but fish should be in the ocean or at least somewhere they can plot against people. Deep in a subterranean environment is the worst place for them.

In 4e they worshiped and were allied with Aboleth which is good, but Aboleth deserve to be in the oceans as well, but that's for another post. Both have a position in a campaign and that position is not just something to fight but instead its about secret cults and growing horror.

The Kuo-Toa are tainted with madness. This is a mildly interesting but as it leaves open the idea of an insane Kuo-Toa being the source of a clue or possibly questionable info or something. But beyond that fishmen should be so different, so alien, that a sane one and an insane one are impossible for normal humanoids to differentiate.

Two notable things about Deep Ones: First they interbreed with humans creating hybrids that live and do their work on land. This is somewhat necessary for the idea of a cult that threatens humanity. This was missing from the original Kuo-Toa but was sort of captured sort-of by the Abolith's Skum, although the rational of how they converted with slime contact didn't work for me. I find Lovecrafts interbreeding worked in a creepy way but comes off as silly in an RPG. I've been a big fan of body-horror involving chaos (that is Chaos of the Warhammer RPG sort) involving mutation through polluted food. This is scarier in my opinion as a player isn't likely to suddenly find out they are the child of a fishman, but they might freak when they find out the local food they've enjoyed has been polluted by something that causes mutations. So instead of fishrape I prefer the fishmen to feed their own eggs to cultmembers and prisoners, causing a certain percentage to become Skum who are then raised by loyal cult members (loyal and controlled by the Aboleth at the heart of the cult).

The other thing is that Deep Ones continue to grow throughout their lives, becoming Godzilla-sized if they live long enough. The Fiend Folio says "SIZE: M (higher levels L)" but that was it. I find this interesting in that you don't need to blend races into a band (like ogres and orcs) to get the variety of muscle in a lair, you just have larger and smaller Kuo-toa. Also every humanoid doesn't need to be the size of humans, give the Kua-Toa a bit of size and they become even more terrifying when they climb over the gunwales of a ship.

Anyway, my love of Kua-Toa dates directly to my discovery of Donn Kenn's artwork. He's the one who did the art in this post, the copyrights are all his. Something about his fishmen, smooth and ghostlike instead of looking like a Creature from the Black Lagoon retread appeals to me and seems more fish like. Having them be a large and terrifying in groups of raiders, seems more terrifying than any of the art I've seen of Kua-Toa (although the one in Peterson's Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors was pretty awesome).