Editing Kuo-toa

[[File:Kuo-toa-5e.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Quite the eager looking fellow, isn't it?]]
'''Kuo-Toa''' are [[Dungeons & Dragons]] fish people living in deep seas and underground caverns. They are batshit-insane theocratic slavers... in all fairness not an uncommon aggregation of [[Underdark]] traits.

Other traits include being able to feel the presence of invisible or ethereal creatures, and armaments that capture rather than kill. Their character-classes tend to fighter, monk ("Monitor"), and cleric.

Their society is theocratic - archbishop rules, children of archbishop ("hooks") inherit the power after they fight each other to the death. Their goddess is [[Blibdoolpoolp]], who actually has humanoid (mammalian - and how!) characteristics rather than kuo-toa. They were introduced in module [[Drow Trilogy|D2]], living in / around her shrine in the ''Greyhawk'' setting. They got a larger city in the second act of ''[[Night Below]]''.

Later canon has ruled that they were former slaves of [[illithid]]s, so suffer PTSD from having their brains scrambled by said slaver octopi. Thus they worship whatever seems the most awe-inspiring for them, apparently what was also awe-inspiring for Gary Gygax: [[monstergirl]] boobies.

5th Edition takes a leaf from Terry Pratchett and has them [[Orks|make a thing they believe in come true]] - this way, they create minor gods from whatever they start worshipping. This was how Blibdoolpoolp came into being: made from a broken statue of a woman and crayfish parts.

Their relations with other Underdark races are understandably contentious. [[Drow]] and (more often) [[aboleth]] sometimes subjugate their communities. Elsewhere drow just try to wipe them out.

==Their Niche==
Gary Gygax for his ongoing Depths series needed some sort of exotic [[morlock]] as might be found this far down. The lore was already groaning under Too Many Humanoids even by the late 1970s. The lore further had [[sahuagin]], to knock off Lovecraft's [[Deep Ones]]; here, the narrative needed something clearly weaker than [[drow]]. He'd already whiffed on his first idea, to bring [[illithid]]s into D1's narrative - he wasn't going to risk ''that'' again. So for D2 he pulled a second Lovecraftian trope, that of madness.

This constrained the kuo-toa nature at their very genesis - here are those fishmen as cannot compete with the others, so they hide in caves from the bigger, nastier fishmen (or squidmen, or other tentacley... things). The kuo-toa, thereafter, end up pathetic and even slightly ridiculous. Their role as an Underdark race has been as serfs or patsies for the real enemy. They're not even as scary as the [[kopru]] in ''[[Isle of Dread]]''. (Later, the second [[Monster Manual]] will serve up the [[aboleth]]; later still, the Deep One niche will be more-or-less effectively met by the [[skum]].)

As Deep-One ''failures'' the kuo-toa work well. They are alien, intermittently hostile, and unpredictable. But if PCs can swallow their disgust and distrust, they can find allies here.

==Eberron==
Keith Baker expanded on the uniquely [[Eberron]] spin on Kuo-toa in his second [[splatbook]] for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] (you know, the ones he wrote himself rather than trusting [[Wizards of the Coast]] not to butcher them?) - in it, he describes kuo-toa as an entire race who live simultaneously in the [[Material Plane]] and the [[Plane of Dreams]], perceiving both at the same time. Unfortunately, since the Plane of Dreams has largely shifted into/been subsumed by the [[Demiplane of Nightmares]], this leaves the entire race trapped in a literal living nightmare, which is the reason why their home ocean is so salty it's completely inhospitable to most forms of life - even [[sahuagin]] can't survive here. Also, their "gods" are actually [[Quori]] who have been captured and warped into new identities by the collective power of kuo-toa madness, still horribly aware of their true selves but unable to act outside of their forcibly assigned identities, so most of the dream-fiends stay ''well away'' from kuo-toa lands!

==Gallery==
<gallery>
D2 cover.jpg|Module D2
Kuo-toa D2 1.jpg
Kuo-toa D2 2.jpg
Kuo-toa D2 3.jpg
Kuo-toa D2 4.jpg|Kuo-toa fighting [[Svirfneblin]].
Kuo-toa breeding pool D2.jpg|A kuo-toa breeding pool.
D1-2 cover.jpg|D1-2 combined module
Kuo-toa D1-2.jpg
Kuo-toa FF 1e 1.jpg|1e Fiend Folio
Kuo-toa FF 1e 2.jpg
Kuo-toa MCV2.jpg|2e
Kuo-toa MM 2e.png
Kuo-toa Night Below.jpg
Kuo-toa 3e.jpg|3e, more froggy than fishy
Kuo-toa inquisitor Underdark 3e.jpg
Kuo-toa whip Underdark 3e.jpg
Touch of blibdoolpoolp Dragon 342.png
Kuo-toa 4e.jpg|4e
Kuo-toa whip 5e.jpg|5e
Kuo-toa archpriest 5e.jpg
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races]]

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]