With long, cartilaginous limbs and gray skin, chokers easily hide in stony alcoves, rocky fissures, and darkened staircases to ambush their prey. The strange little aberrations prefer to pick off weak and solitary creatures, especially those that wander off from their packs or communities. A choker’s long, spongy arms are flexible but deceptively strong. The fingers can tighten rapidly and are ridged with spiky, tooth-like structures that provide an incredible grip. A choker typically strangles its prey to death, then drags the body off or dismembers it using crude tools if the body is too big to carry. If confronted or outnumbered, a choker tries to escape, often compressing into a tight passage to get away. Chokers that encounter humanoids exhibit intense curiosity about their culture, society, and the products of art and industry. This interest isn’t very deep—it just results in chokers that like killing people and collecting any of their items that seem sophisticated, such as jewelry, nice clothing, or written texts.
Chokers sometimes gather in settlements, usually sticking to slums or abandoned structures. These chokers stalk at night, flopping across rooftops, tapping at windows, and scuttling through sewers, gutters, and chimneys to get at prey. An urban choker that finds prey early on its hunt—a wandering pet, a person who is out alone—might spend the rest of the night indulging its curiosity about the products of society. A curious choker might abscond with all sorts of odd items, from tavern signs to library books to roof tiles. A choker usually pilfers only one item at a time, but as its collection grows, it might need to find a larger nest to accommodate its collection, then move its pieces one by one to the new home.
Choker Trinkets
A choker’s nest is small and confined, as the choker prefers. It doesn’t tidy its nest, so everything from animal bones to valuable treasures might be within, compacted into one mass. A choker in the wilderness might have a few remnants of society taken from victims who wandered through. These remnants can include candles, maps, or animal traps. Chokers in cities have stolen goods appropriate to their location: books and scrolls if a library or wizard’s college is nearby, steins and pillows near a tavern, or fishhooks and shipping manifests near a dock, for example. Chokers almost never have edible or drinkable items, as they prefer to consume these “delicacies” themselves—even magical potions and alchemical items.