No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60'
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 4 to 12 (Maybe larger specimens...)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 spatter, 2d6 ram, 3d6 engulf/digest
Save: F1
Morale: 11
Eerily silent as they prowl the deep dark, Orbiculates slither along upon nearly any surface, leaving behind a sticky film of rust-colored ooze that is slightly poisonous for up to an hour after the thing has passed (touch does 1d4, Save for half). As the sticky ooze dries, it congeals into a rancid-smelling series of soft blobs that are both highly sticky and highly flammable. Some delvers gather these reddish globs in order to use them in place of burning oil. The stuff ruins lamps, but can be mixed with one-part strong wine to two-parts oil to make a very effective cleanser for removing dried mud, blood or other such crud from armor, and polishing weapons.
Orbiculates scour the deep places in search of vermin to squash and then absorb. They seem to subsist upon a diet of rats, bats, bugs, and small humanoids like kobolds. This tendency to devour such vermin have made Orbiculates fairly popular with some stronghold builders and underground architects as a sort of organic pest-removal system. Capturing a live Orbiculate in order to install it in a newly constructed site can prove quite challenging as these things are mindless, emotionless and difficult to persuade or manipulate...though they will sometimes follow a trail of bait, but that approach carries a number of draw-backs with it, not the least of which is attracting things other than an Orbiculate.
If struck by a sharp edged weapon, an Orbiculate will spatter a sticky, highly acidic goo out to 20' for 1d6 damage.
In combat a typical Orbiculate will ram an opponent in an attempt to crush them into a wall, floor or whatever is handy. Once they have pummeled their victims into immobility, the Orbiculate will settle down upon them and slowly engulf them, absorbing them into their protoplasmic mass where they will be dissolved and digested by their internal acids and enzymes.
It has been recently confirmed that even a very large Orbiculate can, and sometimes will, traverse ceilings and drop down upon their prey from above.
Paper minis are cool! nice work.
ReplyDeleteThat looks nasty.
ReplyDeleteHurray for the return of the paper minis! You guys need to eventually pull all of these into a single PDF.
ReplyDeleteHi & thanks everyone. My eyes are feeling a lot better, I can focus for longer periods of time without so much trouble and so I'm getting back up to speed. There will be more paper minis, and maps, and we're completing work on a few PDFs as well.
ReplyDeleteWhitney--you might consider doing a few paper minis of some of your characters from the Peripheral World, like the not-so-delightful Mz Renfield perhaps...
PT--these things are even more nasty when you consider that certain illicit underground grimoires offer techniques for converting Orbiculates into other, often polyhedral forms...and there is also a peculiar, if exceptionally rare form of obicanthropy rumored to haunt the scowling denizens of certain unhallowed cryptresses in the dark deeps...
Matthew: We're working on it. First we need to get the September Short Adventures PDF-ed and posted, then a few more freebies that have been held-up for a while (Terminal Grimoire, Worldboats...), then we can look at getting onto more of a schedule for rolling out some of this stuff in expanded, revised, edited and improved form, either for free or at a modest price. We have a bunch of adventures that we have been building for a while now...some in Wermspittle or the Kalaramar Drifts (Zilgor's Repose is coming...), a few in Zalchis, a couple in some unnameable place, and there is a possibility that we may finally go ahead with our original plans to provide support materials for a certain classic RPG with loads of unpronounceable names...depending on how things go over the weekend, of course...
It looks like it has a nucleus and vacuoles, yes? "A certain classic RPG with loads of unpronounceable names" - here is hoping that it is two such games: Call of Cthulhu and Tekumel!
ReplyDeleteNucleus/Vacuoles--yep. These things are massive self-contained ecologies unto themselves, and they play an essential, pivotal if mostly misunderstood role in facilitating the extension of human-livable environments deep down below the normal limits of pressure, air toxicity, etc. But that is for another post...
ReplyDeleteRE: Cthulhu--Check out the stuff we have already done for Cthulhoid Games, including the Lovecraftian Character Traits Table. We could be convinced to do more HPL/Cthulhoid stuff.
RE: Tekumel--Well...the Shen are restless, but so far no official word has arrived to clarify our current situation. We'd like to do a few things along these lines, but there remain a few minor obstacles that need to be sorted-out prior to this taking place. In other words, it is out of our hands...