Reducing Blob of Ain 4 [Humanspace Empires]

Reducing Blob
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Inimical
Movement: 30' (10')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 8
Attacks: 1
Damage: 4d6
Save: L4
Morale: 12

Mindless and voracious, the Reducing Blobs of Ain 4 are deranged bio-components of out-dated and spoiled terraforming systems run amok. These amorphous creatures occupy themselves dissolving and breaking-down the metallic elements of the various ruins scattered across the wastelands of this toxic, mostly abandoned world. If exposed to intense flame, they explode doing 6d6 to everyone within a 300' radius due to the extremely volatile chemistry of their unnatural metabolisms.

Xenobiologists at the local micro-campus maintained by offworld NGOs as a charity-effort believe that the Reducing Blobs can be captured and put to use for a number of industrial applications, such as possibly serving as domesticated oxygen-producing systems or living waste-reclamation mechanisms. It is also theorized that it may be possible to extract dissolved metals from the intestinal slurry of the Reducing Blobs, making it possible to mine them after a fashion, though no one has tested this wild scheme as of yet...

Bloat-Puffers of Ain 4 [Humanspace Empires]

Bloat-Puffer
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Inimical
Movement: 60' (20')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: 2 (Corrosive Vapors or Engulf)
Damage: 3d8 or Swallow (3d6/turn within the beast's digestive system)
Save: L6
Morale: 10

Vile and wily macrobial predators that shroud themselves in corrosive vapors, Bloat-Puffers are vicious ambushers who use crude but effective tactics to trap their prey within shattered installations and ruined buildings. Psychically transparent*, Bloat-Puffers hungrily seek out the most intelligent prey available so that they might assimilate their prey's brain and nerve tissues into an ever-growing tumor-like pseudo-cortex that is distributed through-out the entire colony-creatures interior fluids. They also maintain the partial skeleton of their last victim, suspended in a special fluid-sac where it floats like a macabre mannequin. It is suspected that the skeleton is kept not as a trophy, but as some sort of internal referent for the dissolved cortex, so that accumulated tissues and memories of their assimilated victims have some sort of familiar referent thus making them more tractable and controllable.

A Bloat-Puffer tends to be 10' in diameter for every HD, some specimens have been observed in the Northern Wastes by drones that are estimated to be more than 200' in diameter, but that could be a faulty interpretation brought on by all the weird interference in the area...

When a Bloat-Puffer attacks, it spews approximately one-third of its mass toward the victim and can extend this pseudopodic assault 10' outwards for every HD it possesses, thus a 9-HD Bloat-Puffer can strike out to 90' with an engulf attack. The corrosive vapors that constantly roll off of the gellid flesh of the thing are effective out to 30' range before they are too dilute or diffuse to do much real harm.

They are big, clever and can cling to just about any surface, including ceilings and walls, a favorite tactic in places that can support their massive bulk. Another favored tactic that some Bloat-Puffers will use is to wait at the top of an incline or ramp and then come rolling down upon their prey at high speed, like a gooey juggernaut...

*Psychic Transparency means that the creatures cannot easily be detected by psychic means, and are immune to most psychic attacks, and cannot be communicated with via telepathy, empathy or any similar discipline/technique.

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...

Ain 4: Trarkku Rootworld

Thanks to the Drune there is now a new minor race running around in Humanspace Empires; the Trarkku. These previously nameless and unknown beings are from Ain 4, in the Hyades. Below are some preliminary maps of Ain 4.

Ain 4 / Hyades / North Polar View

Ain 4 / Hyades / South Polar View

Ain 4 / Hyades / Equatorial View

These are rough drafts, not the final version(s). The South Polar Region is heavily illuminated, possibly from massive solar mirror assemblies or perhaps because Ain 4 rolls around its primary star-sun with that pole aimed at the sun. More details will be forthcoming at the Ain 4 blog.