Aberrant

You are one of the most bizarre creatures to walk the land. You look like a humanoid but you have aberration blood running through your veins. As you grow in power, this blood, of this otherworldly creature, makes you view the universe in a whole new light and unlocks unique powers.

You may have lived a normal life, up to a certain point at least. But on the day you stepped into adolescence, your physical condition started to change along with your understanding of life. The blood within grows as you grow, waits patiently, and when the right time comes, changes you permanently.

As you mature, you become more and more aware of the potential within you. Your blood is unique and sentient. It whispers to you the moment you think you are alone, reminding you that you will never be so, not even after death. It is something that gnaws at your body, as well as at your mind and at your soul. There is nothing you can do but to accept this fate.

A Unique Bloodline

Aberrations are some of the most unique creatures in all the realms. From their anatomy to their goals and motives, they are completely strange and frightening. You carry the blood of such an otherworldly creature. This makes you quite precious in the eyes of some. Your blood can be used in many different rituals, or it can be used to unlock the doors leading to the secrets of hidden powers. Some mages may want to capture you, study your anatomy or experiment on you. In short, your life is an interesting one, but one that has many hardships, nonetheless.

A Mystic Birth

Since your existence is not like most others, both anatomically and spiritually, your birth also brought with it certain mystic events or signs. For instance, unending rain, different sky colors, unlucky events, creatures lurking in the shadows, unintelligible whispers coming from thin air, strange shadow plays or other things of a similar nature could accompany your birth. These can be seen as good or bad omens depending on the society doing the interpretation. As a result, you could be called “destined” just as you could be dubbed “cursed”. You can bring your family luck and wealth, or just as well cause them to move away.

Plans of Eons

As mentioned above, the natures and motives of aberrations are strange and unknown. Concepts like time and place are relative and insignificant for them. They are creatures of another universe or time. Whether your character is good-aligned or evil-aligned, lawful-aligned or chaotic-aligned, you know that you are a part of these strange creatures’ plans, which were prepared to be executed in eons.

Standard Traits

Your aberrant character has the following traits granted by the aberration blood that flows in its veins.

A Dominating Bloodline. There can be aberrants of any race. Instead of choosing a subrace of your race, you can choose Aberrant and gain different features than your race generally has, making you a unique character.

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1 and your Wisdom score decreases by 1. The aberration blood helps you unlock the secrets of the universe but it leaves you with a thinning concept of reality.

Age. Thanks to your blood, you live a longer life than your race is expected to. Although you mature at the same rate as your race, you live an extra 100 years.

Alignment. The creature whose blood you carry stands outside the parameters of reality. So, your instincts urge you to act against the rules. Hence, aberrants tend to be chaotic-aligned.

Darkvision. Your eyes are affected by your aberrant blood, granting you darkvision out to a range of 60 feet.

Size. You are the same size and build as your race.

Speed. Your speed is the same as your race.

Aberrant Lucidity. The aberration blood in your veins grants you a lucidity about whichever environment you are in, both socially and physically. You gain advantage on your Wisdom (Insight) checks and your Wisdom (Perception) rolls.

Madness will not die. If you die, your soul leaves your body, but your blood does not. When your consciousness abandons you, the aberration within you takes over. It can use your character to do anything it wants until your soul is brought back by spells like revivify, resurrection, wish or true resurrection. The motives of the aberration are at the GM’s discretion and is only known by the GM.

Shattered Mind. The whispers you hear and the maddening dreams you see distort your mind, your thoughts and your ability to focus. You are immune to being frightened, but you have disadvantage on ability checks to remember names, historic information, etc.

Submitting to Madness. You can choose to bring forth the madness within you. The sentient blood of yours takes control, twists your physical appearance and grants you new powers. When you choose to unleash the madness within, your physical appearance changes and you look more similar to an aberrant. For example, dark-purple or pale green veins become visible on your skin, which may also turn a cloudier color, you may develop a foul stench. You can talk to your GM to determine in what way your appearance becomes more aberrant.

Your submission to madness lasts for 1 minute. Since this is a very painful process for your mortal body, although you gain unique powers during the submission, you also suffer 2 levels of Exhaustion at the end of the duration. When you set the aberration within you free, you gain the following benefits:

• Your creature type changes to aberration.
• Because of your aberrant appearance, you have disadvantage on your Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Persuasion) checks and gain advantage on your Charisma (Intimidation) checks.
• You gain the ability to breathe underwater.
• You start to talk and understand Deep Speech and you cannot talk in a language other than Deep Speech even if you do not know it normally. This does not affect your spellcasting, meaning that you can still cast spells that have a verbal component.
• You can cast the crown of tyranny* spell once. The DC of the spell equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier.
• You can use your action to summon an ooze-like aberration that is connected to your body. It is a reflection of the sentient blood within you, an Aberrant Visage. As you grow in power, it becomes more powerful as well. You can call forth an aberrant visage of CR ¼ at 1st level, of CR 1 at 5th level, of CR 2 at 9th level, of CR 3 at 13th level and of CR4 at 17th level. You can use your bonus action to dismiss the aberration, or it is dismissed automatically when the duration of your Submitting to Madness ends or its hit points drop to 0.