Slaad

In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, slaad (pluralized as slaadi) are a fictional race of Outsiders that resemble giant humanoid toads of various colors.

Licensing
The slaad are considered a "Product Identity" by Wizards of the Coast and, as such, are not released under its Open Gaming License.

Ecology
Slaadi are all extraplanar outsiders, classified, in Planescape, as "planeborne." That is, like the tanar'ri, yugoloths, baatezu, and celestials, slaadi are composed of the same substances as their home plane, rather like the elementals of the Inner Planes. Slaadi, along with modrons and rilmani, are considered 'cordians,' the planeborne of the morally neutral planes.

Environment
Slaadi are native to the Outer Plane of Limbo.

Typical physical characteristics
Slaad generally resemble froglike humanoids. They have a wide range of colors corresponding to their rank in society. Size also varies between the different castes, from human sized to several feet taller than human sized.

Alignment
Slaadi are always chaotic neutral except for the death slaadi, which are usually chaotic evil.

Society
Slaadi have a social caste generally believed to be based on the color of a slaad's scales, though other sources seem to indicate stones lodged in their foreheads. However, these beings are made of chaos themselves, so it is very hard to distinguish them from each other. From the bottom of the hierarchy to the top, there are mud slaadi, red slaadi, blue slaadi, green slaadi, grey slaadi, death slaadi, white slaadi, black slaadi and finally the slaad lords. Slaadi usually reproduce by implanting eggs beneath their victim's skin or by infecting them with a disease. Their claw attacks implant their eggs into hosts, which hatch inside the host's body and consume the host from the inside. The alternate form of reproduction is if a Blue Slaad bites its opponent. This bite triggers a transformation of the host into a slaad over the course of a week. Mud slaadi eggs only produce mud slaadi. Red slaadi eggs produce blue slaadi, and the bite of a blue slaad produces red slaadi. If either a red slaad or blue slaad infects an arcane spellcaster, the host will spawn a green slaad, superior to its parent in that it may cast spells. A green slaad, upon reaching its hundredth year of life, will retreat for the duration of about a year, giving it time to transform into a grey slaad, which focus more on spell-casting than most other Slaad. Some grey slaadi undergo an unnamed, mysterious ritual, which transforms them into death slaadi. Death slaadi possess amazing magical and physical might, but prefer to use their strength to defeat their opponents. Death slaadi tend more towards an evil alignment than do most other slaadi. If the death slaad survives a century, it turns into the demonic white slaad. And if the white slaad survives a century, it turns into the epic black slaad. The black slaad is the most powerful slaad, excluding the slaad lords. In the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons, the slaadi were ruled over by Slaad Lords.

The Spawning Stone is the primordial home of the slaadi. It is located in "a realm of their greatest dominion".

Each race of slaad converges on the Spawning Stone for a season of mating. The hermaphroditic slaadi mate at the stone in turn, fertilizing each others' internal egg sacs. When the next slaad race in the cycle wrests the Spawning Stone away from the previous group, the slaadi carry around these seedlike fertilized eggs for later implantation into host bodies. Sometimes, however, young slaadi are produced right there at the stone because the slaadi implant each other in their mating frenzy. Thus, dead adult slaadi routinely float about the stone until destroyed by the chaos of the Limbo plane. Though the stone drifts from place to place, currents of chaos-stuff always flow away from the stone. Slaadi can recognize these currents and follow them “upstream.” The currents grow into tsunamis and give birth to chaos storms when the stone changes hands among the slaadi.

No two slaadi are born the same; due to their inherent chaos each slaad may be very different from its predecessors. Indeed, there was once a time when slaadi of different colors, and different powers, were common, however, the Slaad Lords Ssendam and Ygorl also two of the most powerful slaadi somehow affected the 'Spawning Stone' to prevent the emergence of slaadi more powerful than them, which keeps the slaadi within the aforementioned groups. Although anomalies do slip through in the chaos, they have less variety, and less chance of being more powerful than the Slaad Lords.

Slaad Lords
Slaad lords are more bullies and manipulators than they are actual leaders. Known slaad lords include Ygorl, Lord of Entropy; Ssendam, Lord of Madness; Chourst, Lord of Randomness; Rennbuu, Lord of Colors; and Wartle.

Creative origins
The slaad were created by Charles Stross for the Fiend Folio Tome of Creatures Maleovolent and Benign (1981).