'Dungeons & Dragons' Has a Creepy Monster That's the Perfect Oracle

Are you a Dungeons & Dragons DM looking to impart some dangerous knowledge onto your party? Instead of searching lost dungeons or seeking out wise sages, try introducing a nothic into your next campaign.

The nothic is a relatively recent addition to Dungeons & Dragons lore, having first been introduced in 2003. The creatures are aberrations, transformed wizards cursed by the evil demi-god Vecna for seeking out forbidden arcane secrets. Nothics are horrific and terrifying creatures, with a single eye that can literally rot the flesh off a player's bone with a single gaze.

While nothics are transformed into monsters, they also possess some remnants of their past lives. These creatures are still driven to collect knowledge and secrets, even if they don't understand exactly what it is they're collecting. Their magical eye grants them a strange magic insight that gives them the ability to extract secrets from other creatures, which in turn becomes a valuable commodity available for trade.

Nothics are best played as dangerous but tragic creatures — obsessing over magic items in a strange hope that they can one day become human (or humanoid) in form. Nothics are evil, but they desire magic objects above all else, and they don't necessarily need to attack PCs unless threatened or provoked.

There's a few ways to introduce a nothic into your home campaign. Maybe they're a rumored hermit who lives in a remote part of the woods, or live near some ancient ruins relevant to the campaign's current quest. Maybe a nothic is actually a famed wizard who disappeared long ago trying to find out the secret to beating some world-threatening foe.

Because nothics are so strange and dangerous, they can become instantly memorable characters in your campaign....and are a lot of fun for DMs to play. I recently played a nothic who toed the line between humorous and dangerous — a creature with a broken mind who didn't understand the knowledge he possessed and retained only fading snatches of his past life. He was a sad, tragic character, and he also had a stockpile of magic items to tempt the PCs with in addition to secrets about their current quest. After spouting off random facts about the characters (including at least one that the player didn't want the party to know about), he bargained for a wand of conducting before giving some valuable information about the city they were about to enter.

If you're looking to bring a creepy, unsettling, but somewhat tragic creature into your Dungeons & Dragons campaign — try adding a nothic. Worst case scenario, they make for a good way to drop some knowledge on a party and provide a creepy threat to low level adventurers.