Saturday 22 December 2018

D&D Monsters: Sahuagin

While mermen have obvious mythological antecedents, the idea of bipedal fish-men such as the sahuagin is a more modern one. This is not to say that occasional pictures resembling such things don't appear in the odd medieval manuscript, or whatever (the Polish bishop-fish is one such example), but there's rarely much detail associated with them beyond the image. Instead, the concept of the sahuagin is more likely to have been influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones and/or the eponymous monster in the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon.

While there are other generally similar-looking fish-men in the D&D canon, the sahuagin have the distinction of being the only one to appear in both the 1st and 5th edition versions of the Monster Manual, so I'll use them as a proxy for the others here. Of note is the fact that, unlike merfolk, they are regarded as "evil" and therefore make suitable monsters, creeping ashore to menace seaside fishing villages or attacking boats.


1E

As seen in 1E, sahuagin are basically humanoid, but covered in a scaly dark green hide as tough as chain armour. The image shows a somewhat ape-like face with heavy brow-ridges and a spined and webbed crest running from the top of the head down to at least the shoulders and likely further than that. Similarly shaped fins are seen running down the arms and the back of the legs, and there are visible gill-slits on the neck. Physically, they are tougher than typical humans and more intelligent with it.
Sahuagin culture is described in unusual detail - the entry is longer than that for, say, orcs - much of which is clearly specific to a particular setting. To summarise, they live in communities with an average of 150 members, composed of domed stone buildings on the seabed. Rather like orcs, they are fond of torture, and regularly eat humanoid prisoners. Their society is hierarchical, based on a combination of strength and age, since they apparently grow continuously throughout life, becoming dramatically tougher the longer they survive. Unusually for a 1E race, the females are socially powerful, being physically weaker than the males but holding religious authority and able to learn a significant degree of magic.

Sahuagin have acute senses of both hearing and vision, but their eyes are too dark adapted to easily cope with sunlight, and we know that they hatch from eggs, growing rapidly to reach maturity in a matter of weeks. That immature individuals nonetheless form about a sixth of the total population implies a very high infant mortality rate, presumably with them fighting to the death to prove their superiority over clutch-mates. Sahuagin, unsurprisingly, have their own unique language.

2E

Because of the unusually thorough description in 1E, the 2E write-up adds very little to the information on the race. Physically, however, they have changed dramatically, with an appearance that is now much more fish-like, while also adopting some batrachian features, enhancing the resemblance to Deep Ones. The skin is paler, and tiger-striped on the back and, while the fins on the limbs have gone, that on the back is much larger. Oddly, given the lack of a tail, there is a caudal fin apparently projecting from the buttocks. The face and head resemble those of a fish, rather than an ape, but with long ribbed, ears, and a hairy tuft dangling from the lower jaw.


3E

The image in 3E also adopts the more fish-like appearance of 2E. The beard has gone, but the fins running along the arms are back from 1E, while the creature once again has five fingers and toes on each hand and foot, up from four in the previous edition. The caudal fin is now placed at the end of a long tail, which must surely be more functional; it's noteworthy that this is vertically arranged, as it would be in real fish, rather than having the horizontal position commonly seen in merfolk depictions. Since mutants seem to be common, some of this may reflect the sort of individual variation we wouldn't otherwise expect to see in members of a single species.

The more detailed statistics reveal that sahuagin are stronger, faster, tougher and more intelligent than humans, although not to a truly dramatic extent. In other new details, their teeth and claws are now long and sharp enough to cause meaningful injury, they can telepathically communicate with sharks, and they have an additional 'blindsense' ability as well as darkvision. They become ill in freshwater and begin to suffocate if kept out of water altogether for more than about six hours. Unlike many other races, they still have a unique language.


5E

The 5E version has what seems to be a smoother skin - and it's much less tough than in previous editions, so this may be intentional - and once again sports a visible nose on the face, as it did in 1E. There are a pair of barbels on the sides of the jaws, and the rayed flaps on either side of the face resemble small pectoral fins more than they did in previous versions. 

In terms of its statistics, the 5E sahuagin has been toned down a little, being only barely superior to humans, and able to survive out of water for four hours, rather than six or more. Where previous descriptions implied that they lived in at least moderately shallow seas, they now dwell in the lightless depths, and therefore must travel some distance to raid the shore.


Unsurprisingly, sahuagin are not much expanded on in core books for the various D&D game worlds. One of their key features from the rules is that they serve evil gods, and have effective priestly spell-casters, so the nature of their deity at least has to be explained on some level if they're going to be discussed at all. In 1E, they are simply "devil worshippers", but later editions reference their Forgotten Realms deity, which is a kind of shark god. In Eberron, they worship a god of chaos and destruction, although they aren't specifically "chaotic" themselves. In Golarion, they have an empire far out in the oceans, and mutations seem to be even more common - or their survival is more tolerated - than in the standard setting.

Mystara does not have sahuagin as such, but the shark-kin fill the same role there. Less rapacious than sahuagin, they are still hostile to humans, and shift from a merfolk-like tail to a pair of legs at certain times of the year. That they physically resemble sharks implies some distinction from regular sahuagin in terms of their appearance, and probably biology - sharks, for example, lack the rayed fins seen on all depictions of sahuagin.

Where fish-men exist in other game systems, parallels are naturally even harder to draw. The most obvious counterpart, though, the Deep Ones of Call of Cthulhu, noted for their ability to mate with humans and produce young that slowly transform from human to fish-man.


As for their biology, we must assume that, aside from an at least partially human-like skeleton, sahuagin internally resemble fish, rather than mammals, as merfolk are likely to. As it happens, most of the internal organs of fish are, in general terms, similar to those of mammals, although the details can be radically different. So there's a stomach, liver, kidneys, and so on, but, for example, the heart has four chambers arranged in a row, rather than two sets of two, side-by-side.

One interesting question about sahuagin biology is the "blindsight" ability cited in 3E. This specifically detects only living beings, and only works underwater - unlike darkvision, however, it doesn't appear to be obscured by cloudy or murky water. This implies that what's going on here is a form of passive electroreception, a method used by many real-world fish to detect the tiny electrical signals given off by nervous and muscular activity in other animals. This only works in water, because air is a poor conductor of electricity, and, obviously, the target has to be alive and moving about for it to be ay use. So it's almost certainly what was intended by the authors.

As with merfolk, however, the really big question is respiration. 2E and 3E sahuagin lack a visible nose, and it's not absolutely clear that they don't have gill slits from the illustrations. 5E sahuagin have both, but it's probable that the nostrils don't connect to the respiratory organs, and are purely sensory in nature - as is the case in many real-world fish. If this is so, it suggests that sahuagin have gills, but no lungs, as one might expect for something so obviously piscine.

We know, of course, that they can survive for some time out of water, although not as long as merfolk. This likely means that they don't literally breathe air, but simply hold their breath, like a whale, only in reverse. Stay too long on dry land, and they literally suffocate. This would, it's perhaps worth noting, make it hard for them to speak out of water, having no air to force through their throats. But they could surely swallow air and expel it in a sort of belch, giving them an appropriately hideous croaking voice.

3E also states that freshwater can make them ill, although this isn't mentioned in other editions. This also makes sense biologically, since saltwater fish do, indeed, have difficulty in fresh water. This is caused by the necessity of drinking seawater and expelling the excess salt through the gills and kidneys. Humans cannot survive by drinking seawater for exactly the opposite reason, and a saltwater fish (or sahuagin) placed in freshwater will excrete the salt it needs to keep functioning. Being unable to replenish it, it will eventually die of hyponatraemia. While a small number of fish species can adjust their physiology to move between the sea and rivers, most cannot... and sahuagin evidently fall into this larger category.

We know from the first two editions that sahuagin lay eggs. The usual pattern with fish is for the female to deposit unfertilised eggs into the water, and for the male to cover them with sperm. Most fish that don't do this are sharks, which, as noted above, don't really resemble sahuagin very much. However, it may also be relevant that all picture of sahuagin after 1E show them wearing loincloths or skirts, implying visible genitalia, since there's no practical utility to such garments. (Technically, we don't know that the 1E version isn't equipped in this manner, too...)

In the real world, fish with external genitalia fall into one of two categories: either they are sharks (or their relatives) or they are freshwater. Sahuagin are neither, so this could be another example of whatever anthropomorphising effect led to them having legs and arms, which real fish clearly don't. Being created by a deity would fit the bill, but it does mean that, in this case, real-world analogies will only take us so far.

The eggs themselves are not described, but they're likely the sort of soft shell-less sort that we typically see in fish. They seem to be produced in smaller numbers than as is the case in, say, salmon, but, even so, mortality is high and infant competition presumably very fierce.


In terms of other game systems, sahuagin are generally described as both physically and intellectually superior to humans, although not necessarily by much. Their skin is at least as tough as thick leather, and probably more so. They are all reasonably competent, if not truly exceptional, warriors, and some of the females have decent magic, with an emphasis on attack spells and healing. However, they grow throughout life, so that some will be significantly more deadly than others - these are often mutants, with an extra pair of arms. Their ability to survive out of water is, as noted above, often limited, but most versions agree that they are capable of surviving even at considerable depth, and do not need light to 'see'. Later editions also add a berserker-like frenzy, which may be a key feature of the race, depending on how such a thing might work in a different system.

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