Working on an Underworld ecosystem/random encounter table to go with the White Ape Monastery, the Terrible Cuckoos, the Zombie Pilgrims, the Tombs of the Serpent Men, and all the rest.
SPINE DEMONS
Large (tiger-sized), carapaced, ghost-white spider crabs. Ambush hunters who stalk their prey in bonded mating pairs. Fast and fearless, relatively short lived, don't feel pain. Top of the mundane food chain in the Underworld. A hunting pair will usually have a clutch of 2d6 harmless babies somewhere near their hunting ground.
HD4, claw d6, claw d6, armour as chain, faster than a human, disposition: hungry, territorial. Will attack wounded things first, and try to drag them off into the darkness to kill them.
HUNTER MAGGOTS
Leech-things about as long as your forearm, with sharp, rigid mouth-parts. Surprisingly quick. Can be unreliably domesticated as something like a hunting hound; the smell of blood drives them into a frenzy. Eat carrion by preference but will attack anything if they get hungry enough. Live in enormous colonies and spend most of their time in a torpor, springing to life when something edible gets close.
1hp, ripping mouth d4, armour as leather (squishy, but hard to hit due to erratic leech movement), moves as human, disposition: carrion eater.
Always prioritises the worst wounded person present, and will stop to eat a corpse rather than pursue other targets. They do double damage against prone, dying, or unconscious targets. Usually comes in a swarm of 20 or 30. Will not approach a fire (a lit torch waved in front of you will give them pause).
PETROL KRILL
These small shrimp things live in the pools of petroleum that seep into the deep places. Their biology is not well understood; some think that they could be the larval state of other petrol-eaters. Humans can't eat them but white apes can.
Petrol krill can be sold to interested academics or chemists, but you have to keep them alive in petroleum (sunlight will kill them). A jar's worth can be sold for 40 silver.
PEACEBODIES
These are pale, mindless things with roughly human bodies (although they move on all fours and are on average about 20 percent larger than a human), large cow-ish eyes, and weird internal organs. They eat krill for sustenance, and then bury themselves under piles of stones, or block up the entrance to natural caves, and wait to get hungry again. They are quite strong, but never defend themselves. Preyed on by almost everything down here, and occasionally domesticated and used as beasts of burden.
HD3, no attacks.
PEACEBODY SOLDIERS
Very rarely, a peacebody will undergo a transformation in a more specialised form. They grow large, hideously strong, extremely violent, and attach themselves to peacebody herds as protectors. Each herd will only ever have one Soldier attached, and they are really rare (maybe 1 herd in 10 will have one). They don't eat the things that they kill, and hunt by crawling silently along walls and ceilings and twisting the heads off things with their long, long arms.
HD5, strangulation d12, unarmoured, disposition: vengeful protectors. They move completely silently and rely on ambush tactics. If they attack from surprise, their crit range is expanded to 16-20.
PETROL SQUID
Horrible pale cephalopods that sometimes inhabit the petrol pools. Their bodies do not grow to a standardised plan - tentacles grow from the central flesh orb haphazardly. They will use these to drag prey down beneath the surface to drown, and then specialised mouth organs and enzyme injectors to liquify the internals and suck out the nutrient slurry. The empty skins skin to the bottom of the pool, where they are preserved in their hundreds. They breath air and can crawl, very slowly, along the ground, but they are vulnerable like this and usually prefer to stay in their pools.
Petrol squid are famously intelligent, and can grow to a very large size over the years. There are many apocryphal tales of ancient squid that can talk, cast spells, or dominate the minds of mortals.
Young: 2HD, 4x tentacle (d4, range 10ft), armour as leather, disposition: curious, hungry. If a tentacle attack does damage, the character must save STR or be pulled 5ft towards the squid. Takes half damage from bludgeoning.
Old: 6HD, 4x tentacle (d6, range 20ft), armour as leather, disposition: spiteful, hungry. If a tentacle attack does damage, the character must save STR or be pulled 10ft towards the squid. Takes half damage from bludgeoning.
Ancient: 10HD, 8x tentacle (d8, range 30ft), armour as leather, disposition: playful, proud, hungry. If a tentacle attack does damage, the character must save STR or be pulled 10ft towards the squid. Takes half damage from bludgeoning.
Treat an an ancient Squid like any other intelligent NPC. 50/50 if it speaks common. It won't be able to actually talk, but will use tentacles to write with the petrol. If it can't speak common it will probably try to communicate with you via weird squid charades (expect pale tentacles to be held in rough human forms to facilitate this - as horrible as it sounds). Often wants books, vast offerings of food, and fruit from the surface. The mind control stuff is just a myth.
Good stuff. I love me an underground pool of oil; makes me think what an interesting adventure it might be to have a low-level party racing to claim a pocket of petrol krill against, say, an Efreet. Obviously, the genie could wipe the floor with them, but it risks the life of the krill, and the structural security of the underground, if it were to ignite the petrol pool, so it can't act directly, or send its favored minions. Torchlight is a risky and dangerous choice in these environments!
ReplyDeleteThanks! The underground section of the dungeon I'm writing up is going to need to have some notes about what happens when the petrol pools are set on fire, because of course adventurers are gonna do it
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