Let Loose the Lamp Louse from Untraditionally Arcane in Your 5E D&D Game

Salutations, nerds! Today I want to share with you one of the creatures that came up in our last session of Untraditionally Arcane, the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign at Nerdarchy Live where the Chaos Crew takes on the role of wizards from various untraditional schools of magic because the traditional ones of 5E D&D are on the fritz and puts us in a unique position to fix them.

Monsters to light the darkest tangles

Last session we ended up in the Beard Dimension. There was a period of travel and our Dungeon Master permitted each of the players to add something we ran into and interacted with to the plane. You can pick up your very own Beardomancy Bundle, some of which yours truly wrote and designed much like the creature of which you are about to learn.

For my part this addition was the lamp lice. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Thrusting agency upon players often yields terrific outcomes like this!]

If you look at a close up image of a louse they’re partially transparent and you can see the red of the blood they’ve imbibed just chilling there inside their bodies. For a lamp louse this liquid is a Beard Tonic and and causes the entire louse to glow.

Although the lamp louse is slow it is very strong and can move through the hair of the Beard Dimension with ease. Farmers often domesticate beard lice for help with pulling their combs and harvesting things. They lay their eggs against the stalks of hair and these bumps stick fast and are rather difficult to extract. Often, if a farmer intends to raise a lamp louse to help them with their work, they cut down an entire stalk of hair just to get at a lamp louse egg.

Lamp lice are typically very docile creatures and exist in a perpetual state of calm. If attacked, however, they defend themselves and are just as capable of drinking blood as they are of drinking hair tonic. A blood-gorged lamp louse glows violet instead of blue, though this phenomena is almost never seen in the wild unless the lamp louse has been cornered.

For this reason lamp lice are often excellent candidates to pull ploughs and carriages. It nearly never takes more than one to get the job done and they form strong bonds with those who raise them lovingly. The stats of the lamp louse are similar to the water strider from Chimes of Discordia: Fantastical Mounts with a few key differences.

Lamp Louse

Medium beast (insect), unaligned

Armor Class 13 (Natural Armor)

Hit Points 22 (4d6 + 8)

Speed 30 ft.

• Strength 13 (+1)
• Dexterity 15 (+2)
• Constitution 14 (+2)
• Intelligence 4 (-3)
• Wisdom 11 (+0)
• Charisma 6 (-2)

Skills Athletics +3, Perception +2

Senses passive Perception 12

Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +2

Follicle Glide. The lamp louse can traverse through magical hair and fur. While doing so, the lamp louse doesn’t disturb the material it moves through.

Lamp Light. The lamp louse sheds bright light in a 10 foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet.

Actions

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d6 + 1) piercing damage.

Tonic Bile (Recharge 6). The lamp louse spits up glowing blue hair tonic in a 30 foot cone. Creatures in range must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or be coated in the tonic, wildly growing hair and reducing their movement speed by 10 feet.

Do you watch Untraditionally Arcane? Have you played with Beardomancy yet or interested in doing so in your own 5E D&D games? We’ve got quite a lot of content about this unusual source of magic all over the website here. Please tell me about it in the comments below, tweet me about it @Nerdarchy or me @Pyrosythesis or connect with us on Facebook — I’d love to hear what you have to say. And of course, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — Searching online for images of a giant louse was a terrifying mistake. Instead here’s the good ol’ fire beetle from the Basic Rules. It’s insectoid, it glows and it doesn’t create nightmare fuel. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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