My players characters are currently exploring some truly ancient underground ruins of a sunken city (the setting is Ptolus, if it matters), and the PCs are trying to find the sites of some temples of various gods to explore.
Next up on the list are temples of ancient gods of knowledge and magic, and when I searched for thematically appropriate monsters to populate them, I came across Nothics. They have a pretty good base concept, but I need some more ideas to make exploring a ruin filled with them interesting. Things I am looking for in particular include:
- D&D lore about the Nothics (this doesn't have to be from 5E)
- Ways of personalizing them and their environment, emphasizing how weird and creepy they are
- Variant stat blocks that might make encounters with them more interesting
- Creatures that might co-exist with them
But feel free to throw any ideas you have out here - I am still in an early brainstorming phase!
People are turned into nothics by the god Vecna when they discover secrets that mortals should not know (particularly RE the elder god Tharzidun) to keep the knowledge from spreading. If youre putting a bunch of nothics in one place you should establish how and why all these people gained forbidden knowledge and why turning the first few didn't stop the others. You could maybe make special nothics who used to be specific characters before turning and have kept some of their old abilities. If Tharzidun is involved you have an easy explanation for the presence of any aberrations, especially beholders and beholderkin. Any one eyed aberration is probably related to Tharzidun somehow.