We boggies are a hairy folk,
We like to eat until we choke.
Loving all like friend and brother,
And hardly ever eat each other.

The genesis of the Drowling

This is the second of this set on "new" halfling races for D&D gaming. The Grimling were covered already. In a sense, the Grimling were derived from the Drowling, but were more serious both in nature and in campaign use.
Both come from halfling lore.

The Grimling were a gaming concept that were never put into any campaign use...on the other hand, I used the Drowling with, let us say, a howling good effect. Keep in mind a couple of points:

• We tended to play darker themed campaigns
• We all had a cynical, sarcastic funny bone
• We used to drink...a lot...during these games

The origin of the Drowling...weird bastard children with three parents

• The quote I led off with came from a parody of The Lord of the Rings from National Lampoon called Bored of the Ring. Juvenile and simple minded, this parody also ran to the sarcastic and cynical view. Halflings become "boggarts" or "boggies"...

Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garrote, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the "Big Folk" or "Biggers," as they call us. As a rule they now avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They are a little people, smaller than dwarves, who consider them puny, sly, and inscrutable and often refer to them as the "boggie peril." They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them.

• Tucker's Kobolds
  Ever since a DM hit me with these, I had wanted my own version

• And a campaign ran over 30 years ago in which I played a Drow, Neff Despana. This was the first of many campaigns in which we moved away from traditional "heroic" themes and did...other...things. I kept telling the DM that Neff was Chatoic Neutral, and he kept telling me the character was Chaotic Evil. The rest of the party had similar insanities...
  ...The Bug brothers, fighters, had a genocidal hatred of halflings, and tried to rape a female vampire
  ...the party's "pocket healer", an NPC, was mortally wounded during a fight. Upon finding the magical item that the NPC had been using to heal the party, the other characters let this cleric die and then ate him. I don't know why they did it in game terms, but from the player's decisions, they were bored of having to account for the NPC's actions each turn. Yes, this is the kind of shock humor we indulged in. Yes, I am laughing at the memory now. No, Neff did not take part. Wait, I remember one thing...they ate him so that he could not be resurrected.
  ...the campaign ended when the party captured and humiliated the DM's favorite god (Kos); said god having chosen the party to eliminate a rival had given them a chain divinely enchanted to have devastating effects against immortals. Of course, the party...without a word of discussion...immediately used the chain on this god. Since the DM was drunk (as we all were), he did not do the obvious thing by saying the god was immune to his own device. As the party dragged Kos down the hallway with the chain, we took turns "dropping deuces" on his head. The DM did not like this, and the player that ran the Bug brothers taunted him, and that was the end of the campaign.

The synthesis

The Drow Neff had a fetish for female halflings. The Bug brothers killed halflings wherever they found them. Neff "saved" some halfling women when the Bug brothers "led" the party on a raid against a halfling village. The party actually tried to stop them but the Bug brothers were munchkins (something that we usually did not complain about). The word "saved" is in quotes because Neff held the women in sex slavery; hidden from the Bugs, but still enslaved.

So a few years later, considering the other two factors (and being drunk), when I as the DM needed a new meanie to hit the players with (most of whom had played in the campaign discussed), all the factors just clicked and I had an immediate new threat with a funny backstory. The quote that I opened this post with? The foundation of the concept.

The god Kos cursed the party. The Drow, Neff Despana was doomed to father a new threat to the world, and have his name eternally reviled. As Neff continued to hide his slaves from the Bug brothers, they became surprising fecund...to practically the point of dropping litters. Each child matured amazingly quickly, and it became apparent that each naturally inherited the classes of their father...mage-thief. Each child had more fearful attributes. They were paranoid, psychotic, and eternally hungry. The insanity of the Drow race had melded into Kos's curse, along with the fear that the mothers lived in, to create a new race of carnivores that was inherently dangerous and insane

Drowling appearance

Drowling appear as drow of 3 foot height. Their dress is haphazard, and having them run amok in the nude is not inappropriate. They retain the drow beauty.

Drowling stats

Drowling have all 18 stats...they are a very patent example of survival of the fittest. Any drowling that didn't have theses stats would have already been eaten by his littermates

All drowling are mage-thieves at birth. They mature in a matter of weeks...if they aren't eaten by the nearest drowling in the meantime, including their own mothers. Hey, childbirth takes a lot out of a gal!

Drowling have both the halfling resistance to magic bonus and the drow magic resistance. They gain spells inherently and randomly, but DM's should ensure that half the spells assigned are actually deadly.

They have a maximum ability level of 11th in these classes, but no drowling has ever survived long enough to reach the maximum. As paranoid creatures with a setting of 10 on the paranoid dial, if a drowling is noted to start gaining too much ability, the others will temporarily align (as much as it is possible for them to) to end the threat.

Drowling...ahem...society

The first rule of Drowling is hunger. The second rule of Drowling is insane hunger. These folk are Chaotic Evil to a point that demons would be jealous...that is, assuming the drowling didn't swarm and eat the demon.

They may cooperate with each other, and they may not, depending on how hungry they are at the time. Drowling trust no one. They find hidey holes to sleep in, and it is quite acceptable in drowling society to punish any drowling caught sleeping...by eating him.

There is a reason that drowling females have litters. The rate of cannibalistic attrition almost wipes the race out without any other considerations. As far as getting drowling pregnant, it is usually the result of rape, although it isn't uncommon for females to seduce a male with the intention of mothering children and gaining a fine meal in the process. Drowling of both sexes have the insatiable lust of their patriarch. And a child born of either a drowling/drow or a drowling/halfling mating will be a drowling. These are always rapes. Not even a drow could be insane enough to mate with a drowling.

Drowling do tend to congregate. It is not that they are antisocial, it is simply that their levels of hunger and insanity prevent any real attempt at a society.

Drowling solely eat meat. Cooked meat is best, but sometimes they are too hungry to wait. Rotting meat is OK too...mmm mmm maggots. Sentient meat is better than squirrels, but if a worm is dumb enough to cross a drowling's path, down it goes.

Drowling Combat

The drowling do tend to cooperate against outsiders, and they may restrain their insanity long enough to mount a meat raid against a community close enough by.

The drowling can be efficient in ambush, but sometimes the insanity and/or hunger makes combat choices tend more towards primitive levels.

And sometimes they will start eating their opponents before the opponent has even stopped fighting.

Campaign use

I have actually used these cannibal loons in game before, and the results were hilarious. Half the party was in full retreat from the initial and brutal ambush, but as I realized the party couldn't handle the amount of drowling I threw at them, I started having the drowling start taking bites out of them...one drowling even going so far as to start peppering the character in the middle of combat.

Hmmm, I should have noted Loony Tunes as an inspiration as well.

The next time I used drowling on the party, the mage threw a fireball which took out two drowling. The drowling dropped the attack on the party to indulge themselves in the fresh BarBQ, exactly as the mage intended.

This is sick and twisted stuff, but a party of people with this kind of humor should enjoy their time spent with drowling very much!

“He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. 'It's a pity I've run out of bullets,' he thought.”