What They Don't Tell You About The Behir - D&D

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Music

Music for Manatees by Kevin MacLeod

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Sources

1st Edition Monster Manual
2nd Edition Monster Manual II
3rd Edition Monster Manual
5th Edition Monster Manual
Dragon Magazine #156
Dragon Magazine #333
Shining South

[vidarDJstarkill]

In a campaign I ran a while back, the players met a group of exotic dragonslayers one of whom was a Behir named Spaz. He had found a magic ruby necklace when he was young and ate it, which caused the ruby to just stay in his stomach and give him a constant effect of increased intelligence and immunity from natural death (only way to die was through being slain). He didn't know this and such assumed he was immortal and because he was also the smartest Behir in existence, he decided he was a deity whose purpose was to rid the world of all dragons. I RPed him as a cross between a tweaked out drug addict and an overly pompous paladin who thought he was his own deity, and he was a lot of fun!

[markmccarthy]

me at a party: "i don't even want to behir"

[CyberneticHamster]

Interesting fact, Behir's looks to be based on the Beitir from Scottish mythology

 from wikipedia: The Scottish Gaelic word beithir has been defined variously as "serpent", "lightning", and "thunderbolt". It is also referred to as beithir-nimh ("venomous serpent") and nathair ("serpent" and "adder"). The word may also mean "wild beast" and may be derived from the Norse for "bear" according to Celtic mythology scholar James MacKillop.


 Also I love that you give the artist for 5th edition a shout out

[redacted]

Behir: glutton, in dormant when filled, fat, has a lair that no one should come in, can be bribed with food...
Is this my monster form?

[hehecactusboy]

Fun fact: most insects do not have immunity to their own poisons.

[lavaguava]

i love the behirs new design. it looks so fast and intimidating. like it would be on a perch above a path one second and eating the wizard the next second.

[quintrichardson]

I love that my low level party has stumbled across a behir den (in game told them to avoid it by every npc they met as well as having written DONT FIGHT EVERYTHING on a whiteboard behind my head). This video is perfect to help me describe the monster in a way to scare them off

[dawsonhelf]

“Behirs never stop growing”
. . .
Imagine if someone used a wish spell to make a Behir immortal, then it wouldn’t stop growing, it would make the deepest part of the Underdark its home, possibly driving a majority of the Underdark inhabitants towards the surface, making this thing a literal “World Serpent”
-Double D

[xcelentei]

I bet the Behir develop their lightning using the difference in charges between the acid in their organs, just like a battery does. If I was a giant trying to emulate dragon abilities, acid poison and frost would be easy; just generate the chemicals (hydrochloric acid, neurotoxin, and niteogen compressed to a liquid state, ) in an organ then expel them. Fire would be more difficult, but expelling a gas with a very low flash point under the right pressure and conditions would likely do it.

In the case of lightning though, you need an understanding of potentials and current. Stone giants almost worship the world above, so they would want to do it using the properties of the real world rather than just cheat with magic. By studying the lightning techniques of storm and cloud giants, they'd probably get the idea that charge goes from one thing to the other. Some experimenting with alchemy would reveal materials such as magnets which hold potentials. (remember, they live underground and can ask a storm giant to lightning strike iron, so a magnet would be possible for them to make.)

Then, just like a battery, they find two acids which react at a steady rate and create a current based on the product, and build a creature around it. The battery acid conveniently doubles as stomach acid, so all they need to do is make a creature built to consume large quantities of food and survive with minimal energy expenditure while the energy from digestion resets the acid potentials in its gut. A crocodile and anaconda are perfect for this process, so we combine their traits with a little stone giant psionics and build the organism around our organic battery.

The only thing the creature can't make in-house is the wiring to turn their electrical potential into a discharge, so it eats conductive metals like copper and silver to line its digestive tract with metal filings. Its layered body fat acts as insulation to keep the Behir safe, and when it wants to breathe lightning it triggers electeochemical reactions in its stomach, runs that potential through it's conductor stone (likely some kind of magnet, ) and sends the current through the fat-insulated metal filings to discharge from it's mouth.

If the Behir recharges/resets its battery acid through biological energy, it will burn fat to get that energy. This means that if you push a behir to use too much of its fat recharging it's battery stomach, it won't have the necessary insulation and will zap itself when it tries to use its breath weapon. This fat-to-metal current system also explains why the behir is immune to lightning: running a current through the fat will simply direct it into the metal wiring network, and back into the depolarized stomach. The wire goes both ways, and this way recharges the biological battery.

And that's how the stone giants emulated a blue dragon's lightning breath and put it in a creature you can give orders to.

Also, electroshock therapy works in humans because it hard resets your brain and makes it forget the dysfunctional thought patterns. This means that the poor things are chronic amnesiacs. The reason they forget even loving masters after ten years, and why they can't ever learn more advanced speech patterns, is their biology keeps resetting any mind they may have developed. Only basic or fundamental memories and phrases may or may not be remembered, but their instincts to kill dragons and feed will always return. It's only a matter of time before its cursed biology deletes its love for good.

[dracusdaiarr]

Just so you know the fat thing absorbing poison is 100% possible. Pigs do the same thing.

[hexbystorm]

You should talk about myconids! Not enough content with the cute mushroom people!

[theukon-dos]

4:30 that thing would definitly be mistaken for a dragon. Maybe not from an outsider's perspective, but if you where a farmer being attacked by one, all you'd see is a scaley maw, a draconian face, and a whole lot of lightning coming at you

[kalebbrady]

I absolutely love your videos! It really helps knowing the history and lore of all these creatures!

[rzrx]

I appreciate the amount of detail you go into regarding ecology, loot and its application, and how its anatomy works.

[greatstoryteller]

Wanna know another scary reptile? Totem barbarian lizard folk who's a vampire. Tanky. Large healing. And is probably grappling the monster

[febothesir]

As a non-player of DnD, I love your DnD videos! They fill me with such feelings of fantasy that I can't get anywhere else. Keep up the good work!
If you're looking for more topics for videos, can I recommend covering significant locations and the histories of the places?

[Rancidtunip]

In my last campaign we accidentally walked into a Behir's lair that was meant to be our dead end. We ignored all the warnings and signs the DM gave us. Right off the start of the it knocked out our fighter, luckily for us the DM forgot we found a Scroll of true polymorph 4 weeks earlier. I ended up turning it into a human child with blue hair and we kept him like a mascot/pet for the rest of the campain.

[Reddotzebra]

I'm guessing that when they told him to make a new design and tried to describe the horns, someone got something wrong and "backwards curving horns" was interpreted as curving ram horns.

[probablythedm]

I really like the new design. Now they look like a giant snake/dragon hybrid with a massive snakemaw that looks very able to swallow things even wider than its head. Utterly, bloody, terrifying. The old art is "just" another wingless dragon.

10/10. Pleases the DM's vore fetish... it's bloody scary getting your character swallowed. Always freaks me out. :S

[serialdreamer]

Good timing, i was just brainstorming a man-made dragon-hunting creature for a story arc i had in mind