The Colloid

There is nothing as mind-bogglingly gorgeous and, at the same time, alien, as wandering through the colloid, a landscape completely covered in resplendent crystalline structures, with impossible angles. A sense of comfort, serenity and warmth pervades the colloid, but also a strange feeling of melancholia. While many creatures of the underworld are cognizant of the dangers of lingering in the colloid, few, apart from the undead who experience the colloid as a thoroughly hostile environment, realize that the crystalline entity is actually sentient; there is a method to its glacial spreading and a cunning intelligence at work, an intelligence that is very much aware of the worth of free-willed servants. Your patron places a very high value on life, as the colloid, in its own way, seeks to “save” organic life; at the same time, the entity is suffused with an all-consuming hatred for the undead.

Expanded Spell List

The colloid lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you.

Colloid Expanded Spell List
Spell Level Spells
1st entangle*, sleep
2nd calm emotions, detect thoughts
3rd plant growth**, sending
4th death ward, hallucinatory terrain
5th geas, reincarnate***

*The colloid’s entangle spell does not conjure forth entangling plants, but instead uses crystalline filaments to the same effect.

**The colloid’s plant growth spell instead grows crystalline structures. It may not be cast over hours.

*** The colloid always reincarnates worthy creatures as colliatur versions of their former race.

Colloid’s Herald

Starting at 1st level, your alien patron allows you to channel the power of the colloid directly into the area around yourself, transforming natural vegetation, minerals, rock, mud and worked stone.

As an action, you can emit a wave in a 30-foot radius sphere around yourself. The terrain is transformed into a crystalline, hauntingly-beautiful version of itself until the end of your next turn. Alternatively, you can choose to concentrate on maintaining the colloid terrain. If you do, you can maintain it up to 10 minutes. While you concentrate on the terrain, it moves with you; otherwise, it remains stationary.

While within this extension of the colloid, you can telepathically communicate with any creature within the colloid terrain you created. You don’t need to share a language with the creature for it to understand you, and the creature doesn’t even need to be able to understand a language, though creatures without a language can only 18 convey the most basic of impulses. You and up to your proficiency bonus allies can move freely and unimpeded through colloid terrain. You make the decision of who can freely move through it upon creating it. The colloid terrain is considered to be difficult terrain for all other creatures. Undead within this colloid terrain lose turn immunity and their condition immunity to exhaustion. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again before you finish a short or long rest.

Colloid Specialist

At 6th level, you can temporarily become one with the colloid. When you take damage, you can use your reaction to dissolve into crystalline strands that evaporate in a cascade of pearlescent streams and reassemble you in an unoccupied square that you can see, up to 60 feet away. You reassemble in that square, remaining a crystalline version of yourself until the end of your next turn. While crystalline, you enjoy resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage and advantage on Constitution and Charisma saving throws. If you reassemble within colloid terrain (including the temporary colloid terrain you create with your Colloid’s Herald feature), the benefits of your crystalline state instead last for Charisma modifier rounds, as the colloid lends you its strength. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Colloid’s Vastness

Beginning at 10th level, your patron has truly embraced you. You become immune to the effects of colloid melancholia (see page 63) Additionally, you increase the radius of your colloid terrain created with your Colloid’s Herald feature by +30 feet and may use it an additional 2 times before requiring a short or long rest to use it again. Finally, whenever you cast entangle or plant growth, the terrain created by these spells is treated as colloid terrain for the purpose of your Colloid Specialist class feature.

Seed of Salvation

Starting at 15th level, you gain resistance to radiant damage. If you already were resistant to radiant damage, you instead become immune.

If you already were immune to radiant damage, you instead become resistant to psychic damage.

Additionally, you gain the most feared ability of the colloid’s warlocks: You can expend a Hit Die as part of using your Colloid’s Herald class feature. If you do, the colloid terrain you create is permanent; however, it is powered by your life-force as long as the fleck of terrain has not connected with the main body of the colloid—until then, or until the colloid terrain is destroyed, you cannot regain the Hit Die used to render the colloid terrain permanent.

The colloid terrain does not move with you and instead remains stationary, growing slowly and almost imperceptibly. Destruction of the material that you turned into colloid stops the spreading of the colloid and allows you to regain your Hit Die.

Killing you severs the foothold of the colloid and returns the terrain to normal over a 4-hour period.

You must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again.

Sidebar: Seed of Salvation and its repercussions

The Seed of Salvation class feature makes a warlock of this lofty power capable of potentially changing the dynamics of whole regions of the underworld. The colloid seeks to spread and connect, and the ability to extend beyond its reach allows the entity to collect information and items. How the colloid and its servants approach this, ultimately depends on the region. Areas close to the colloid are more likely to be cognizant of the dangers it poses; in such areas, colloid warlocks will usually employ subtlety to grow the colloid…or, if the respective settlement has already been converted to the colloid’s cause, do so openly, with somewhat religious overtones as the faithful await the embrace of the entity. The farther away from the colloid, the more likely it is that warlocks will employ a strategy not unlike that of organized churches, using the properties and splendor of the colloid and the ability to rebirth the faithful into beautiful colliatur to justify the foothold of the entity—provided the settlement and its denizens are aware that the beautiful crystal is not a manifestation of the elemental powers of earth, but an intelligent entity, that is. Suffice to say, warlocks that reach the lofty levels required to spread the colloid tend to be high on the most wanted lists of the colloid’s enemies…

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Occult Secrets of the Underworld Copyright 2018, AAW Games, LLC; Thilo Graf and Jonathan G. Nelson.