Dreamtime Octopuses

These creatures, as their name would imply, look like the octopus familiar to us. However they possess a human-like intelligence, and are not sea creatures. They float a few inches above the ground, and move in a fashion suggestive of swimming. Their only known community is a small suburb in Teleleli.

The language of the creatures is visual: they do not speak, but convey meaning by causing their bodies to display various symbols and colors. While they can understand speech, and have learned to 'write' the trade-pidgin of Teleleli on their skins, it is clear that some shades of meaning are lost. Certain artists have learned their language, which they paint on canvases. Likewise some wizards have learned to communicate with them by means of casting illusions. They report that the creatures' language is like that of art or magic, in that feelings, symbolism and metaphor are easier to get across than are concrete facts. Thus there are many things that are unknown about the creatures.

For example, they are native to a place called the Dreamtime. However it is unclear whether the Dreamtime is literally connected to the world encountered in dreams. Likewise it is unknown whether they have travelled from another time. The place may, indeed, be merely a far land in the same world as Teleleli. In any case, the means by which they come here is also unclear.

In Teleleli many of the creatures have, unfortunately, fallen into burglary as a profession. Their tentacles make them skilled in climbing and in the manipulation of small objects, as is needful in lock-picking. Further, the fact that they float above the ground means that falling does not injure them as much as it would a human or similar creature. Traps such as concealed pits and blades triggered by pressure-plates, likely to be used by the wealthy and security-conscious, are quite useless against them. The creatures place no pressure upon the ground unless they have fallen from a height, and thus they will glide over such traps without setting them off.

It should not be thought that Dreamtime octopuses would make perfect adventurers. While they have the advantages detailed above, they also have handicaps. They are far more delicate than humans, somewhat weaker, and quite slow (though not as slow as the inhabitants of Slowtown). They can only wear armour that has been made to a special design, quite different to that used by humans.

Popular sentiment has connected them to the Seventh-Day Inventists, since they appear to have no religion. The octopuses, however, state that the gods of the Dreamtime are not present in Teleleli. As with many such statements, it is debated whether they are speaking literally.

Dreamtime octopuses are excellent swimmers, but will drown in water just as humans will.

(My thanks to The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, upon whose research I have drawn in preparing this entry)