Grimlock (Dungeons & Dragons)

Grimlock
Characteristics
Alignment	Usually Neutral Evil
Type	Monstrous humanoid
Image	Wizards.com image

Grimlock is a fictional monstrous humanoid that lives in the Underdark, a vast interconnected system of caves underneath various Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. Based on subterranean humanoids called "morlocks" created by H.G. Wells for his 1895 novel The Time Machine, the grimlock was first adapted for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), and has appeared in each subsequent version of D&D rules as a savage, pale-skinned and eyeless humanoid that dwells in dark places and prefers the taste of human flesh.

In 1895, H.G. Wells created a horrific species of carnivorous subhumans called "morlocks" for his novel The Time Machine. These creatures lived in dark subterranean places, only emerging at night to seek food. The Narrator of the novel describes one as "a queer little apelike figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner... [it was a] dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back... [they were the] half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch."

In the late 1970s, the British magazine White Dwarf began collecting submissions for proposed monsters from its readers. Many of these were gathered up and published as TSR's Fiend Folio in 1981. One of the new monsters was the grimlock, created by Albie Fiore, a staff editor at White Dwarf and one of the book's illustrators. It was clearly based on H.G. Wells' morlock: "fierce subterranean humanoid warriors" with "blank and sightless" eyes, "thick, grey skin", "usually clad in dark rags", with "particularly white and sharp" teeth who were hard to detect when they were motionless. Unusual characteristics of the grimlock included the ability to "see" using their other senses to a distance of 20 feet, a corresponding vulnerability to spells that caused auditory hallucinations and thus disrupted their "sight", a very high rate of movement in combat—twice that of a normal human—and extremely thick skin that was the equivalent of fairly good armour. These qualities plus the fact that they would be encountered as a mob of anywhere from 20 to 200 made them a formidable opponent for the average party of adventurers. The grimlock was said to be able to occasionally cooperate with medusae, since their blindness made them immune to the medusa's gaze. The illustration, presumably by Fiore, shows a group of snarling, muscular humanoids that resemble long-haired Neanderthals with shark-like teeth.

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Wikipedia