Cannon Lizard
HD 2 Defense leather Tail Slam* 1d6 or 1d8
Move slow Int 5 Morale 8
Special cannonball
Cannonball: Cannon lizards have an organic cannon tube that runs from their mouth to the tip of their tail. Each cannon lizard has an iron cannonball (size of two fists) that it keeps at the tip of its tail. It is capable of propelling this cannonball out of its mouth (via peristaltic contractions) as fast as a cannon fires. The fired cannonball does 3d6 damage to everything in a 200' line, Dex check for half. The lizard must then re-swallow the cannonball if it wants to reuse this ability. (It only has 1 cannonball). When it has no cannonball in its tail, its tail slams do merely 1d6 damage.
Dungeon Bug
HD 1 Defense leather Pincers 1d6
Move as human Int 7 Morale 6
Special hiss
Hiss: Once per day, 6 dungeon bugs can hiss in unison. Those that hear the hiss must save or be instilled with some of the primordial insect impulses. Treat this as a command spell that lasts for 1 minute, or until it has been successfully carried out (therefore removing the source of stress). Roll a d3:
- Extinguish all light sources!
- Hide underneath some furniture! Or at least between some furniture and the wall!
- Bite your enemies to death with your own mouth! Then (try to) lay eggs in their corpses!
Atavistic Psychoplasm
HD 9 Defense unarmored Psuedopod 1d8 + grab
Move as dwarf Int 1 Morale 10
Special anti-intelligence field, devolution beam
Anti-Intelligence Field: 30' radius. Spellcasting requires an intelligence check. If the check fails, the spell is not lost, but instead remains in memory. Characters AND PLAYERS may not speak or think in polysyllabic words. For every polysyllabic word the PLAYER says, their character takes 1 damage for every syllable beyond the first. This represents their brains overheating.
Devolution Beam: 1/day. 200' long. All targets in the beam must save or devolve. This grants them +1 to hit and -1d6 for intelligence. They also become unable to speak except through primate screeches and hoots.
Tusk People
HD 1 AC leather Move as human
Weapon 1d8 Int 10 Morale 7
Tusk people with 7 HP are the shamans. They are marked by red string twined around their tusks and the cow skull masks that they wear. They can cast acid arrow once per day. Whenever they lock eyes with someone (single target each round as free action, gaze attack) and take damage, the damage is mirrored onto the other person.
Tusk people with 8 HP are the leaders. They are marked by the breastplates that they wear and the elaborate scrimshaw on their tusks.
Ecology of the Cannon Lizard
ReplyDeleteIt turns out the creatures are not, as many have surmised, a mage's attempt at creating a biological artillery weapon. Rather they are a wonder of evolution.
Diet
Cannon lizards primarily eat eggs, and to their tiny brains anything egg-shaped qualifies as an egg. Their powerful stomachs, designed to crush and dissolve even the stoutest eggshell, can consume just about anything that isn't metal or stone. Anything indigestible that is too large to exit their body through conventional means tends to get stuck in their egg sac, found at the tip inside their hollow tail. Cannonballs most frequently wind up occupying the egg sac, but adventurers have reported cannon lizards expelling scattershot blasts of spearheads, statue shards, or even gemstones.
Reproduction
Cannon lizards are oviparous, but unlike most lizards, use external fertilization -- the female produces eggs which are later fertilized by the male. Rarely (1 in 6), the egg sac is occupied by its true purpose -- 2D4 eggs (leathery shell, surprisingly heavy... think fist-sized medicine balls). When the eggs reach full size, the mother fires off each one in a different direction. This ensures they are not eaten by the mother (the females eat anything spherical) and that they are fertilized by an unrelated father (the males fertilize anything spherical).
A cannon lizard can also "fire" her eggs when she feels her life is in danger, in a bid to launch its progeny to safety. Getting hit by these eggs hurts, but not as much as a cannonball. (1D8 instead of 3D6, but no save for half -- you can't dodge all of them.)
It takes a considerable amount of sawing and cutting to open one of these eggs, and the results are spectacularly disgusting. However, orns find them irresistible, and an unfertilized cannon lizard egg can fetch a fair amount of silver in areas where orns are used as steeds.
Just watch out for male cannon lizards, who will be drawn from miles around by the scent of an unfertilized egg.
Male cannon lizards do not have an egg sac and therefore can't fire anything. In fact, they are much smaller than the females (about the size of geckos) and are harmless. Unless you have a cannon lizard egg in your pack, in which case you are likely wake up one morning and find the egg and everything else covered with a coating of foul-smelling cannon lizard spunk. Evolved to burrow through the thick leathery eggshell, cannon lizard jism (or as it is known among alchemists, jizzard) burns like acid, causing 1D4 damage every round it isn't washed off. It destroys anything organic on contact, pitting it with millions of microscopic holes. And not even an orn would eat a fertilized cannon lizard egg.
+1 for jizzard! +2 for orns!
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