Sizzlers of Ain 4 [Humanspace Empires]

Sizzler
No. Enc.: 1d6 (3d6)
Alignment: Inimical
Movement: 120' (limited flight)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 7*
Attacks: 2 or 1 (EMP effect, shock, or sting-cells + poison)
Damage: 2d6/3d6/4d6+poison
Save: L5
Morale: 10

Special: Sizzlers possess (1d4) psychic abilities that may be electromagnetic, biological, technological or some bizarre combination of all the above. No specimen has ever been recovered for sufficient study and their shimmering aura of electromagnetic dissonance tends to scramble recorders and other such devices.

Terrible aerial predators of the Northern Wastes of Ain 4, Sizzlers are feared for their uncanny ability to make technological items crash as well as for their virulent hyper-solvent poison that literally dissolves and digests all organic matter within seconds so that they can slurp it all up with their writhing face palps.

Sizzlers may be intelligent. No one is sure. They also can detect radio transmissions and psychic emanations within a five-hundred mile radius. Most tend to be encountered within ruined Astronaut Cult shrines and deep underground near geodynamic power-taps.

Electricity does not arc around a Sizzler unless it specifically allows it to do so -- they have a number of innate abilities that allow them to manipulate electromagnetic forces such as those specified below:

Random Sizzler Powers

1. Emit Blinding Flash of ultraviolet light bright enough to cause 2d4 damage to unprotected skin/eyes.
2. Crash; All electrical and other nervous systems Save -1 or lose consciousness and experience a 2d10% erasure of short-term memory.
3. Shocking Touch; inflicts 2d8 electrical damage on contact.
4. Jam Comms (includes psychic forms).
5. Mass Brain Surge; inflicts 3d6 psychic damage on all unprotected brains within 60'.
6. Lightning Bolt for 3d8 damage.
7. Hyper-Magnetize; the Sizzler creates a spot of intense magnetic attraction that will violently draw everything magnetic to it in a flurry of metal shards and worse, inflicting 2d4 to everyone caught within a 30' radius, persists until relinquished by the creature.
8. Electrical Overcharge; creates a torrent of electrical impulses that spiral outwards from the Sizzler like ripples in a glowing pond, each wave does 1d4 cumulative damage, with there being 3d10 waves on average. All non-hardened systems have a cumulative 10% chance to crash.
9. Spark Cascade; does 4d4 damage every other turn in random arcs centered on the creature, persists for 1d10 turns.
10. Burn; Sizzler adds 2d4 electrical damage to any of its other attack forms, including any already-inflicted poison via a strange resonance effect with the metallic components of the poison itself.

Larger, smarter, more organized and powerful forms of Sizzlers are rumored to lurk about the ruins of some old abandoned Astronaut Cult shrines in the North, but nothing has been verified to date. They do seem to be reticent to enter bodies of water and for some reason draping reflective plastic in sufficient quantities over oneself seems to almost mollify them and at least four would-be scavenger-adventurers have escaped from Sizzlers using this old trick, or at least they claim to have done so...