| Medium-Size Outsider (Evil) |
| Hit Dice: | 1d8-1 (3 hp) |
| Initiative: | -1 (Dex) |
| Speed: | 10 ft. |
| Armor Class: | 13 (+4 natural, -1 Dex) |
| Base Attack/Grapple: | 0 |
| Attack: | 0 |
| Full Attack: | Bite +2 melee |
| Space/Reach: | 2.5 ft. by 5 ft./2.5 ft. |
| Special Attacks: | Wounding, disease |
| Special Qualities: | None. |
| Saves: | Fort +1, Ref +1, Will +2 |
| Abilities: | Str 12, Dex 8, Con 8, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 8 |
| Skills: | None. |
| Feats: | None. |
| |
| Environment: | Lower Planes |
| Organization: | Solitary or swarm (10-100) |
| Challenge Rating: | 1/2 |
| Treasure: | None |
| Alignment: | Neutral Evil |
| Advancement: | - |
| Level Adjustment: | 0 |
Larvae are the evil dead from the Prime Material plane who led especially selfish lives. They are doomed to spend their wretched existences serving the whims of evil on the lower planes. Horrifying in appearance, larvae appear as giant worms approximately five feet long. They are sickly yellow in color and are covered with a thick, viscous, foul-smelling fluid, Instead of a worm's head, they have distorted humanoid faces resembling the mortals they were in life. Larvae communicate with one another through basic body language that cannot be interpreted by anyone else.
CombatWounding (Ex): A hit from larva's bite causes a bleeding wound. Theinjured creature loses 1 additional hit points each round until the wound is bound (a DC 10 Heal check) or the creature dies. Disease (Ex): Anyone bitten by a larva must make Fortitude save (DC 13)or contract a rotting disease. Those contracting the disease will develop a painful skin rot. After three weeks, they will lose 4 Con points a day unless they lie absolutely still. After one month, they will die. A cure disease spell will destroy the disease.
Habitat/SocietyLarvae are herded by night hags who use them as bargaining chips in the Gray Waste. The larvae are sought after by most of the lower planar powers because they are used to form quasits and imps.Powerful liches also seek larvae because they feed off the creatures' energies to maintain their immortal, undead status.The night hags will trade larvae to the lower planar denizens to keep them from entering their territory.The hags will also trade larvae to the liches for destroying those creatures that refuse to trade. It is a complex and wholly evil bartering system that is perpetuated by the growing numbers of lower planar inhabitants.0
EcologyLarvae are actually very useful to the "ecology" of the lower planes. They are the sole means for creating imps and quasits. Since the imps and quasits might later advance to become greater fiends, it can be said that larvae are the foundation of the population of the lower planes.There is no real criteria for selecting larvae to be made into greater creatures. Since all larvae are considered to be equally lowly, they are just randomly selected when the need for other types of creatures arises. How the larvae are transformed into greater creatures depends wholly on the race of fiends doing the transformation. The baatezu, for example, will cast the larvae into one of the many pools of flame found on their plane where the larvae must endure the suffering for 11days. Once their time in the pool is complete, they emerge as the new creature, perhaps a little crueler than they were before they entered.Other fiends have different ways to advance larvae.For more information, see the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix (pg. 62).
