Creatures

The planet of Oacca-Seri was formed imbued with significant power, which seeps into each being and gives all living things a sort of innate magical quality. Because of this, abstractions such as belief, faith, and feeling can have very real effects on the physical world. Thus, the evolution of mythical and fantastical creatures is most accurately described as a manifestation of belief in those creatures. The subsequent existence of such creatures cements belief in them and thus gives them more reality, so to speak, essentially transforming them, over generations, from creatures of belief to creatures of fact. (It is generally assumed that any creature present in existing dungeons and dragons canon exists in Oacca-Seri with no need to be listed here unless their presence is significantly altered in some way)

### Gnolls

Gnolls were one of the first species to manifest on Oacca-Seri, springing from ancient peoples fears of the beasts that hunted them. Forming insular societies built with a strict but arcane hierarchy, unknown to all but the gnolls themselves, they continue to terrorize anyone and everything in their path, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Each society of gnolls is led by one or two, usually the strongest of the pack, and divide work amongst the pack seemingly at random. Each pack has its own language, customs, and clothing, meaning no individual’s experience with a gnoll will be the exact same. When a gnoll pack meets another, a vicious ritual ensues, in which the gnolls fight tooth and nail, sometimes for days on end without food, until only one gnoll remains. This gnoll feasts on the corpses of its fallen brethren, becoming bloated and fetid, until eventually it dies of its gluttony. In a perverse transformation, this corpse gives birth to hundreds of baby gnolls, barely the size of a human fist, who consume the bones of their parent and grow to adulthood, starting the pack anew.

### Mind Flayers

Perhaps the most notable exception to the process of life on Oacca-Seri, mind flayers are not created from belief. In fact, these aberrant beings descended from the heavens long ago, but the technology they held has been lost to time, stranding them on the planet. Able to take any form, these creatures on their arrival transformed into an amalgamation of what they believed to be the two most intelligent species: elves and octopuses. On Oacca-Seri, their society is highly religious, considering the process of consuming a brain a spiritual awakening only to be undertaken after an arduous pilgrimage to see the only elder brain on the planet, located at a clandestine location kept secret from all but the brain’s most trusted advisors, knowing full well that the survival of the illithid species depends solely on them. Otherwise, the flayers feed on the psionic energies around all living beings, a mostly harmless process for anything larger than a dog. For this reason, they tend to dwell quietly in large cities, peacefully maintaining their temples and meditating, writing incredibly complex formulae in the illithid language and designing unfathomable machinery. Every few decades, all mind flayers in existence will undergo what is known as Ceretinere, entering a trancelike state and wandering on foot for days without sustenance, traveling high in the mountains to unwittingly construct vast structures filled with complex machines, known collectively as "The Unfathomable." Neither the mind flayers nor anyone else know the purpose of these structures, but in many cultures, to witness the seemingly unending lines of rhythmic single file ranks marching silently across the landscape is a sign of profoundly bad luck. Completion of Ceretinere takes about a year, and though visible progress is rarely made, the flayers return in their mysterious processions to their previous lives, with no memory of the event. In mind flayer society, this event is considered a blessing, and will usually only occur once or twice in an illithid’s lifetime. To experience three Ceretineri in ones life is believed to be a message from their society before; for reasons unknown, the number three is considered representative of the illithid’s alien ancestry.