The Spawning Stone

Never try to fast talk a slaad.

- planar proverb

Hearsay

Known as Slaadheim to the Ysgardians and the Urkrocl to the githzerai, the Spawning Stone is the primordial home of the slaadi race and the realm of the greatest dominion. each race of slaadi goes to the Spawning Stone in a sequence during the mating season (which looks like any other season in Limbo, but the slaadi always know it), and - while they are mating - currents of chaos-stuff flow toward the stone. Sages believe that the pure chaos matter of Limbo is the food of the young slaadi. Massive tidal waves and whirpools roll out from the Stone for hundreds of miles around when the eggs are hatched.
One death slaad guards the Spawning Stone at all times, and this creature can use the powers of the Spawning Stone as if it were an anarch with complete mastery of chaos-stuff. Some say that anyone who wrests the control of the stone from the slaad gains the same powers: others say that captured stone would simply melt back into Limbo and the slaadi would conjure up a new Spawning Stone somewhere else.

Description

Each breed of slaadi spawns in its own season, and these times are zealously guarded by powerful slaadi and mystical wardings. Each race of slaadi has its own rituals, invocations, and preferences, so each race creates different looks, mixes of chaos-stuff, and temperatures surrounding the Stone. The site resembles five different "flavors" of chaos around the same great, blue-gray boulder. The stone itself is a bent shape, like an enormous horseshoe that flares out at each end, and it's large enough to fit entire castles inside it. The songs of the red slaadi can be heard vibrating the chaos-stuff for leagues around, but the scraping noises of the blue slaad's claws can only be heard by those with exceptional hearing. The deadly acid fogs and poison gas clouds that the death slaadi enjoy make the area nearby uninhabitable for the first reds to arrive when they come to push the death slaadi out. The lesser slaadi (red, blue, and green) swarm in larger numbers than the greater slaadi (gray and death), so even the area of the spawning grounds varies from miles across to a few hundred yards.
In addition, the slaadi kept the stone intact to serve a sort of town for the entire race, primarily as a meeting place and a storage site. A few fading areas of slaadi constructions are sometimes visible dissolving into the amorphus mass of chaos-stuff around the stone. These areas are food stores, egg masses, and fortifications, for each race of slaadi holds the stone until ejected bodily by the greens, and then the gray and death slaadi, who always yields to the hordes of returning reds (some say that it's because the egg pellets of the reds can hatch even within the hide of a death slaad). The interior of the stoen itself is said to be honeycombed with the circular rooms the slaad favor.
The two greatest packs of slaadi are those of the Lone Claw and the Quick Tongue. The Lone Claw is a rampaging mass of red slaadi led by a single gray, called the Sorrowful Executioner. Their raids are feared for their sudden shock tactics, excellent use of distractions, and quick dispersals. What they're looking for, though, is a mystery, even to the death slaadi.
The Quick Tongue is a group of hardened, battle-scared blue slaadi that serve Thurppl the Kicker, the ancient death slaad, as a private army. Some say that Thruppi is the closest slaadi come to a king. In fact, the slaadi are much too chaotic to bow to any masters, but they do acknowledge the death slaadi as the most perfect specimens of their own race. The yleap to obey the death slaad, and somehow the most powerful caste of the slaadi gain their powers through control of the Spawning Stone. The death slaadi also carve the symbols of rank into other slaadi within the chambers of the stone.

Special Features

The slaadi do no one favors, construct little, and get most of their tools and food through foraging and plunder: The raw stuff of Limbo supplies them with most of their needs. However, they need the Spawning Stone to breed: without it, all slaadi eggs are infertile. No non-slaadi is allowed within miles of the stone, on pain of death. Anarchs have reported difficulty in shaping chaos within a hundred miles of the Spawning Stone.
Slaadi skins can be brewed into poison for darts and arrows, so the githzerai sometimes hunt slaadi for poisons: this hasn't done much for relationships between the two races. fortunately, not many githzerai know about the strange venoms this produces, and most are too sensible to try collect any themselves.
One barm yberk lives among slaadi and survives to study them. This is the master anarch Torpellin of the Golden Spires, an outcast githzerai. She knows how to gather the venom from slaadi without skinning them, by smearing their skin with a special fatty coating, and then distilling the poisonouns residue back out of the mixture.

Alternative Name(s)

Slaadheim, Urkrocl

Location under

Limbo