Sunday, October 18, 2009

A Dozen Strange Little Critters

... and maybe a plant or fungus or two, also ;3

These little oddities are mainly for campaign flavour and/or humour. Find a colony in a dungeon, a few invade the party's camp at night, maybe the PCs are actually hired to go gather a certain number (in a suitably hazardous place, of course!) -- anything goes.


1. A mouse with fur of scorched black and bright scarlet. Attracted to sweet foods and alcohol -- and, if startled, bursts into flame.

2. Dense, semi-spherical fungi that bear an uncanny resemblance to tiny human skulls. Rumours whisper that an elixir to feign death can be made from them, but most people consider them cursed.

3. A breed of viper with completely transparent skin and muscle. Its internal organs are pearly and translucent, hard to see, but its skeleton is a dense cinnabar red.

4. Crawfish-like land crustaceans with pale, bluish-white shells and an icy disposition to match. they like to crawl into warm places, and they like to hang on with their pincer-sharp claws ...

5. An invasion of frogs. Chrome-skinned, black eyed, indestructible frogs. No matter what the party does to the little hoppers, they just don't die.

6. Delicate purplish-red violets that will softly press their flowers against skin and draw blood. No hit point damage and no pain, but a frightening bloody welt when the flower lifts away.

7. Opalescent, jelly-like slime mold. Spreads fast -- including over objects and sleeping adventurers -- and periodically sends up rafts of golden spore capsules. Contact numbs skin.

8. Sleek brown and white mottled rats with tool-using capability -- and a stench like troglodytes swimming in an open sewer. Occasionally, giant ones.

9. Teleporting, metal-chewing ferrets with fur of dark grey mixed with blue. The bane of dwarves everywhere, to say nothing of loot-hoarding adventurers.

10. Bright emerald green, two-foot-long earthworms that burrow through stone with the same ease as through earth. (Alternately, neon orange.)

11. Grey and black mussels that can leap from the water, open up and flutter away like small birds. The mussels will clamp onto any surface that impedes their flight.

12. Golden-coloured centipedes that periodically hibernate; curled up and legs tucked close, they look uncannily like sculpted gold finger-rings.

7 comments:

Jayson said...

10. Or perhaps bright blue?

Great list.

taichara said...

@Jayson:

Since blue existed, I wanted a freakier colour *grins*

Glad you liked 'em ;3

The Badger King said...

I can so see abusing #6 to freak out a party. Thanks!

satyre said...

Particularly liking number 7, just out of sheer ingrained fear from years of playing games where yellow mold appears :)

Alexis Smolensk said...

13. Lichen that vibrates, creating a gentle, soothing music. As the lichen grows everywhere, and the lichen closest to the party ceases to vibrate, the party can follow the sound for days.

14. Fat pink earthworms that crystallize and break into their segments when frightened; once calm, they soften and reassemble.

Norman J. Harman Jr. said...

Oh, I'm totally setting up the party "scout" to pilfer #12. Perhaps the cleric will force him to explain why he was pocketing a gold ring before casting neutralize poison.

Very creative, even for you.

Otookee said...

"Teleporting, metal-chewing ferrets" ... Aiiieeee!!!!

Nice mental image on the mussels - I could also see them having insect-like wings, the shells opening up like a beetle's wingcases.