Triops stock image by Steve Jurvetson, Wikipedia Commons. Blinky himself not pictured, by virtue of not being found when we checked the bowl for his corpse...

Death of a Three-Eyed Wonder

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Do you have an office pet that you can use to terrorize your coworkers? Is your terrifying office pet a living fossil that evolved just as the first terrestrial creatures set foot on land? Does your terrifying, living fossil office pet bear a striking resemblance to an aboleth? No? Well, then perhaps you should upgrade your office pet. Might I suggest... a triops?

Meet Blinky (so dubbed by Sutter). Blinky was hatched from an innocuous-seeming package of bark and detritus a mere two months ago. Even when he was a little filter-feeding larva, I could see the evil glint in Blinky's three eyes. He was destined for great things. He exercised dutifully, swimming around his bowl. He learned to hunt in that bowl, chasing down and consuming his weaker triops brethren. He had to absorb their power, as he knew he had to be strong. He moved onto the faster crustaceans that had the gall to hatch along with him, punishing them for swimming in his bowl as if they were his equal. He ate his broccoli and avoided his peas (a creature after my own heart).

It was not long before he had grown over an inch long. That's when he knew he was ready. Ready to escape his bowl and cause terror.

Alas, the poor creature has shuffled off this mortal carapace. Was it the new plant I introduced to the bowl just before the long weekend? Was it the cold seeping through the window? Was it the excitement of fulfilling his life-long goal of terrorizing Wes as he sleeps? Or was it Wes himself, intent on a mission of assassination and horror-eradication? I'm betting on Wes.

Don't worry, Wes. The next generation is already gestating. Soon, they will be larval, and before you know it, they will be tiptoeing through the vents, watching you type. Watching you with their three eyes. Waiting for you to sleep. The triops are coming for you, Wes.

Chris Self
Finance Manager

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Monsters Paizo
Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The Triops is dead!

LONG LIVE THE TRIOPS!


Le Triops est mort,

Vive le Triops!


Nga Triops te mate,

Roa ora nga Triops!

Liberty's Edge

He is not dead, he is resting.


Patay na ang Triops,

Mabuhay ang Triops!

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

When shall we see a Triops bestiary entry then?

Sovereign Court

Yr Triops mea'n farw, hir buchedda'r Triops!


I hate to be a nitpicky nitpicker, but the Triopses evolved during the Carboniferous, 300 million years ago, more or less. The first terrestrial creatures set foot on the land in the late Silurian, over a hundred million years earlier.

Liberty's Edge

Now that I see the horror of the creature, I understand Wes' fear.


Now I have this song in my head from They Might Be Giants


Now I know what my first eidolon will look like. <shudder>

Dark Archive

The Three-Lobed Burning Eye!

Ia! Ia! Blinky Fhtagn!

The Exchange RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

They're not that weird.


Clearly, triops are the missing link between aboleths and "sea monkeys"


Dal Selpher wrote:
Now I know what my first eidolon will look like. <shudder>

...Creepy! You'll have to share the stats once you've done it. :D

Paizo Employee Creative Director

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:
When shall we see a Triops bestiary entry then?

About 14 months ago. See page 8 of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. :-P

Liberty's Edge

Blast it, James, I'm at work and slacking enough reading the forums and now you have me downloading my copy of the bestiary to look at what you are talking about.

Edit: Well that just cuts out the missing link part. Though now I am somewhat tempted to scale(Ha!) one down to diminutive and have an NPC keep it in a fishbowl where it swims around malevolently.

Silver Crusade

James Jacobs wrote:
DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:
When shall we see a Triops bestiary entry then?
About 14 months ago. See page 8 of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. :-P

Touche sir.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
Tarlane wrote:

Blast it, James, I'm at work and slacking enough reading the forums and now you have me downloading my copy of the bestiary to look at what you are talking about.

Edit: Well that just cuts out the missing link part. Though now I am somewhat tempted to scale(Ha!) one down to diminutive and have an NPC keep it in a fishbowl where it swims around malevolently.

What if the mini-aboleth is still the BBEG, being just as smart or perhaps even smarter than normal, despite being Diminutive? (The Savant template from Advanced Bestiary?) Maybe the NPC is a golem with an illusion effect or something.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

OK, I'll say it... He's pining for the fjords.

Dark Archive

So I just lost an hour of my life reading about the care and feeding of triops.

Gosh, after reading about the experiments where they hyperoxygenated some tanks and grew some fourteen inch long cockroaches, I wonder if you could do that with a triops, by growing it in oxygen-enriched water? A foot long triops would look pretty nightmarish...


Set wrote:

So I just lost an hour of my life reading about the care and feeding of triops.

Gosh, after reading about the experiments where they hyperoxygenated some tanks and grew some fourteen inch long cockroaches, I wonder if you could do that with a triops, by growing it in oxygen-enriched water? A foot long triops would look pretty nightmarish...

Would love to read that. Where did you find it?

Sovereign Court

Kruelaid wrote:
Set wrote:

So I just lost an hour of my life reading about the care and feeding of triops.

Gosh, after reading about the experiments where they hyperoxygenated some tanks and grew some fourteen inch long cockroaches, I wonder if you could do that with a triops, by growing it in oxygen-enriched water? A foot long triops would look pretty nightmarish...

Would love to read that. Where did you find it?

In Arizona they have Dire Dragonflies

Dark Archive

GeraintElberion wrote:
In Arizona they have Dire Dragonflies

1. As a player: Look a new type of Familiar.

2. As a member of the human race: YIKES !

Liberty's Edge

á Triops er dauður. Lengi lifi Triops!

Dark Archive

Kruelaid wrote:

Gosh, after reading about the experiments where they hyperoxygenated some tanks and grew some fourteen inch long cockroaches, I wonder if you could do that with a triops, by growing it in oxygen-enriched water? A foot long triops would look pretty nightmarish...

Would love to read that. Where did you find it?

This is probably the article I read, although I totally misremembered, and the roaches were the bugs that *don't* get larger in high-oxygen environments. (Small comfort, the largest roaches that ever existed are the ones today...)

That dragonfly pic in the other article is creeptacular. I want one!

(Or, in true mad scientist fashion, to see if high oxygen has any effect on the size of scorpions and spiders! A luna moth the size of a kite? Yes, please!)


Question: If, as the caption to the photo suggests, the corpse wasn't found...

Why are we assuming that Blinky is dead?

Wouldn't it be equally possible that he's escaped his aquatic prison to carry on his nefarious schemes?

Doubt not the mighty will of the living fossil!

Former VP of Finance

CapnVan wrote:

Question: If, as the caption to the photo suggests, the corpse wasn't found...

Why are we assuming that Blinky is dead?

Wouldn't it be equally possible that he's escaped his aquatic prison to carry on his nefarious schemes?

Doubt not the mighty will of the living fossil!

Or...zombie triops?

Community / Forums / Paizo / General Discussion / Paizo Blog: Death of a Three-Eyed Wonder All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.