Weird, Lesser — Fire

[ Bestiary | Elemental-Kin | Weirds ]
[ Lesser Weird ] [ Air | Earth | Fire | Metal | Water | Wood ] [ True Weird ]

Weird, Lesser — Fire

Lesser elemental weirds appear as strange, snake-like beings. Their bodies are composed entirely of a single element, and while their forms are somewhat malleable, they’re usually around five feet long. They lack the humanoid grace of the mysterious humanoid true weirds, instead resembling restless spirits that have been perpetually caught between states of being.

DESCRIPTION: A lesser elemental fire weird is a sinuous gout of flame shaped like a shimmering serpent. Its rippling mantle of heat blurs its outline and its light leaves an afterimage burnt into your eyes. Its “skin” is a sheath of ember-bright scales that slough off into sparks when it moves. Its eyes are steady pinpricks of yellow that never flicker. It sounds like a roaring hearth stoked by a bellows—soft rushes and sharp crackles—and it smells of scorched resin, hot iron, and the faint sweetness of charcoal. When agitated, the weird extrudes whip-like tongues of flame all along its body. It can collapse into a crawling sheet of fire that flows up walls and across ceilings before knitting back into its serpentine shape once more.

HABITAT: Fire weirds lair where flames can live without interruption. In the Inner Planes, they ride the thermals and ash plumes of the Elemental Plane of Fire, stalking the borders of the Cinder Wastes and the Prismatic Frontier. On the Prime Material, they gravitate to places of continual ignition—magma vents, flaming coal caverns, lava tubes, and furnace-chambers of ruined foundries, tar seeps, smoldering slag piles—especially where a smoking chimney lets it vanish and reappear with predatory speed.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: The philosophy of the fire weird is one of immediacy and appetite: they believe combustion is positive change—swift, total, and illuminating—weirds exalt in the moment where fuel becomes light. Their society is sparse and volatile; solitary individuals meet only occasionally through overlapping hunting grounds, acknowledging one another brief, coded bursts of heat and colour, before peeling away. Temporary courts can form at great fires, where multiple weirds spiral around a flame plume, but these gatherings dissolve the instant the fuel is spent or wind shifts. They ally opportunistically with fire elementals and ash mephits, serving as scouts in exchange for first taste of fresh fuel.

Weirds can be a xenophobic bunch, and don’t really like any cutters who aren’t fire elementals—and this has led many planewalkers to believe all weirds are wicked. However there as the planes become more interconnected, some weirds have learned to put up with solidfolk begrudgingly, or even enjoy their company. These more benevolent creatures sometimes even align themselves with the Princes of Elemental Good. In any case, fire weirds can have quite intense yet fickle views. Fire weirds are extremely quick to anger, but also quick to forget their arguments. As the planewalker saying goes, just leave an angry fire weird to cool off for ten minutes and you’ll meet a different creature.

ECOLOGY: Ecologically, fire weirds feed on volatile combustible released from prey and landscape alike: pitch, oils, sap, spores and pollen, feathers and hair. It does not digest in an animal sense; rather, it invests heat to crack fuel into flame, then reclaims a portion of the liberated energy to sustain its form. Reproduction is catalytic and rare: during firestorms or volcanic eruptions, two or more weirds may dance together and “seed” an egg, burying it in ash, then promptly abandoning it. Looking like glowing coals, these eggs smolder for weeks before hatching as a flickerling that must immediately chase sparks to avoid guttering out.

Graybeards believe that elemental weirds are the immature form of the true weird, although how long these creatures remains in this larval stage isn’t known. It is also strange how they reproduce as lesser weirds, only occasionally becoming true weirds, who do not themselves seem to spawn lesser weirds—which is partly the reason the question of how the two types of creatures are linked is not settled. As they age, lesser weirds seem to become less ethically fickle, and the current theory is that after many cycles of reproduction they eventually mature and settle down as true weirds.

Lesser fire weirds tend to be solitary, unless in the company of a true weird. A cluster of lesser air weirds (called a ‘pyrocumulus’) can often be found nearby true weird pools, where they gather to commune with the elder true weird, perhaps to learn from them, perhaps to defend them. They converse with each other through flickering sparks and rapid colour changes rather than speech, so solidfolk can only communicate with a lesser fire weird using magic.

COMBAT: The lesser fire weird fights like a flash fire, striking from invisibility within heated air, smoke bank, or bonfire to ignite the most flammable target. They then flowing through foes to set fire to as much as they can, while keeping in constant motion. They open by spitting a searing ranged fireball burst to draw attention and test resistances, then close in to grapple a singled-out enemy, forcing breath away and suffocating while their body heat cooks leather, resin, and sinew. Fire weirds prioritise dry, lightly armoured foes and spellcasters. When doused or confronted by cold and water, a fire weird will flee or hang back, skirmishing at range to dry out and reignite terrain. They also like to lure pursuers into bottlenecks where they can surge through their space and set them ablaze in a single pass. If the fight turns against them, the weird will abandon fuel-starved ground without hesitation, seeking new lands to burn rather than risk losing a fight.

Sources

Full Statistics For: [ D&D 3e ]

Canonical Sources: Monstrous Compendium Volume 1, Annual 1994 (as elemental, earth weird, there was no fire weird in AD&D 2e); Dragon Magazine #347 p66-69;70-71 ‘the ecology of the elemental weird’ (as lesser elemental weird); Monster Manual II [3e] p91-92 (lore on true weirds)

Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: These creatures are based on the elemental weirds from AD&D 2e. They weren’t called “lesser weirds” there, since the oracular weirds weren’t introduced until 3e. Since in other editions and in fandom as a whole elemental weirds are associated with a hiding elemental being rather than with a prophetic lady, we chose to swap some terms around. The 2e and 3e weirds have very different abilities and weaknesses; this writeup uses a mixture of both. I’ve attempted to make the weirds live up to their name by making their life cycle and philosophy strange and hard to explain.