Nov 23, 2025
Netheril's Fall - Phaerimm by John Tedrick
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Netheril's Fall - Phaerimm by John Tedrick
Phaerimm
Image © Jake Probelski
[Sponsored by @coldbloodassassin. The phaerimm are theoretically one of the foundationally important monsters in the Forgotten Realms setting, being tied closely to the Netherese, the sharn and other bits of lore. But they always struck me as kind of boring. They're yet another magically gifted aberration that views humanoids as slaves and cattle. And their stats seem to get more pared down and less interesting with every edition. I went back to their first mechanical appearance in AD&D 2e for inspiration.]
Phaerimm CR 12 NE Aberration This creature floats in the air, looking something like a flying sea anemone. It has a circular maw with eyes dotting its rim, four arms with clawed hands, and its body tapers into a long tail, ending in a stinger.
The phaerimm are strange aberrant creatures native to a deadly desert world in another galaxy. Phaerimm have not mastered planetary travel, and are found on other worlds typically as the descendants of captives and experimental test subjects enslaved by wizards looking for alternatives to celestials and fiends. It may be that the phaerimm sowed the seeds of their own calling, as they can be summoned through magic much more easily than other aberrant creatures. Most of these itinerant phaerimm are interested in converting other planets into worlds more like their own, and seek powerful magic items and ritual spells in order to drain the vitality from ecosystems and render them deserts.
Even a newly born phaerimm is a powerful magic user, and they use their spells preferentially over their formidable physical talents. Phaerimm are spontaneous casters, but can convert some of their spells into spell-like abilities to make them easier to cast and harder to counterspell. The vast majority of phaerimm are sadists, which can be used against them; a phaerimm will often make suboptimal tactical choices if it has an opportunity to spread more pain. Phaerimm are slavers, and view enslaved or magically controlled minions as utterly disposable.
The phaerimm are simultaneous hermaphrodites, able to both fertilize the eggs of other phaerimm and be fertilized in turn. Phaerimm courtship is more akin to a business exchange than anything romantic, and the eggs are kept in suspended animation until they can be inserted into a host—mammalian creatures are preferred, but anything living of Small or larger size can provide sufficient nutrients for the parasitoid embryo. Phaerimm keep their incubators secure, stocking their lairs with galleries of floating, insensate victims, each one growing a new horror inside.
An adult phaerimm is about twelve feet in length and weighs six hundred pounds. They fly magically, and are practically immobile in an antimagic field or similar effect.
Which Edition of D&D had the best design/artwork of a Phaerimm?
Second Edition
Third Edition
Fifth Edition
Dungeons & Dragons Phaerimm // Ciruelo Cabral
Densians of Irian: The Phaerimms
a. These windsock looking freaks are a close second for “Greatest Asshole” on this list, coming only in second to the Malugrym because…well come on. The Phaerimms are a bunch of massive dicks, and spend most of their time floating around plotting evil, controlling people’s mind, eating magic reproducing asexually via the old Chestburster trick, and just generally being a bunch of Phallic looking misanthropes with no redeeming qualities. What keeps them from being the absolute worse however is the fact that they don’t really have a long term goal, while they do eventually plane for wide spread world-wide genocide, when they don’t have a singular target to focus their freaky empty mouth head things they mostly just wander around being a douchebags. It is worth noting when a large chunk of the race were trapped behind the Sharn Wall, those who escaped just…kinda wandered around doing their own thing. When they do have a common enemy though they can be quite ruthless and are perfectly willing to organize, and when these motherfuckers get their act together, trust me, its dangerous. Netheril was the most powerful empire in the world and they brought it down after only losing a dozen people. Generally though they seem to prefer to wander around the Material Plane mind controlling people and creating little kingdoms for themselves to rule in decedent luxury all the while indulging in their sadistic megalomania. Of course, the long term goal of this race is to eat all of the magic in the world so they might become the supreme race, and they do plan to get around to that, but generally their individual power is enough that they prefer to just carve out kingdoms for themselves for a few centuries before going to the main goal. What makes them so dangerous is not only are they super powerful innate sorcerers, and mind control powers but also that they are smart. Like, really smart, every one of these creatures is a super genius and while they are hilariously lazy and tend to hyper specialize in magical theory, their minds are absolutely terrifying. Again, when the race as a whole came together they created the Lifedrain spell, one of the most world ending powers in the world.
b. The main gate to their realm is located deep beneath Faerun, but most of it is blocked by the Sharn Wall (See below) Thus those who aren’t trapped their fight an eternal war with the Sharn.
c. The Phaerimm are…not popular at all because again, assholes. Their greatest enemy is famously the Sharn, who they fight an eternal war against, but they also have found themselves embroiled in conflict with the Shades/Shadovars and their kin, which has further drained their resources. Finally now that the Sarrukh have woken up, some of them have felt that getting revenge on the Phaerimm is a worthy cause and have taken to organizing great hunts to bring down lone Phaerimm. Beyond their great conflicts, they also hate the Etherguants due to the fact that they are one of the few creatures who can actually control them, and the Malaugrym because these Shadow bastards are even bigger assholes than they are.
d. The Phaerimm tend to work together very well, they don’t see much need to fight among themselves beyond extreme circumstance and all of them feel like they have a unified goal. Or rather, a unified idea of a goal, the race mostly agrees that they want to find a way to harvest magic forever to sustain themselves indefinitely. There are multiple ways to do this, but the most efficient is to wipe out all non Phaerimm and then remake the Weave in such a way that they can benefit from it. Not all of them agree that this is the best idea, but most Phaerimm go along with this plan, while those who disagree mostly just do their own thing without interfering with that plan. Wiping out spell casters is difficult, so the Phaerimm figure that they best way to do this (after escaping of course) is to target Arcane casters, who don’t’ have divine patrons protector. And specifically, target nations/institutions with a large amount of arcane casters, which often aren’t missed and can set back the entire institution. Mages, Wizards, Magnus, Pact Users, Witches, Druids, and Necromancers are their favorite target as they are already fairly disliked and they might be easier to deal with. In fact many of them support Templar organizations worldwide, as the eradication of any magic makes them happy, and Blood Magic like all other magic frustrates the Phaerimm. In addition to targeting casters, any high magical society is fair game, they still give each other creepy alien high fives for the fall of Nethril.
Monsters - Phaerimm
Phaerimms are evil magicians who would gladly erase all other beings from existence, except that they would consequently lack for serviceable slaves capable of being tortured for sport.
Phaerimms resemble 10-to-12-foot-tall windsocks underneath an ovoid head.
The head disk contains a huge toothed maw and is surrounded by four clawed arms. Beneath their top disk, their long, sinuous bodies taper down to a lethal stinger. They are powerful magicians, gaining levels as sorcerers over lives that span centuries.
If phaerimms were less evil, they would be more alien and difficult to understand, but their overwhelming drive toward inflicting pain makes them somewhat predictable. They communicate with one another by varying the wind speed around their bodies. They communicate with others using telepathy.
They understand Common and several other languages.
Millennia ago, the phaerimms plotted to destroy all life in Faerûn.
They succeeded in toppling the mighty Netherese empire and devastating the area now known as the Anauroch Desert, but were foiled by the intervention of the elder sharns. The sharns imprisoned most of the phaerimms in a magical field beneath Anauroch.
Only a few phaerimms escaped this imprisonment. Some of these escapees live in Myth Drannor, squandering their power on internal political squabbles.
Others have conquered the beholder city of Ooltul and are attempting to break through the sharns’ barrier to free their fellows.