BONUS MONSTER 06:

Fistulizing Endopredator
GRUESANCE

CLASS: BIOCONSTRUCT

Free supplementary monsters for the Mortasheen Tabletop RPG Core RulebookCreated by Jonathan Wojcik
Stats and additional writing assistance by Bonnie Saucier

Description:
This tiny, red-orange monster is shaped like a grape with a small nipple-like proboscis and two large, fishlike eyes.

BIOLOGY:
The typical Gruesance is less than one to two inches in length, but its soft tissues are almost pure muscle reinforced with a virtually unbreakable biocrystalline nanomesh, strong enough to support the weight of a fully grown Undler. Hundreds of individually movable and extremely sharp teeth line the interior of its hollow body, and it can completely evert itself in a fraction of a second. Preying on monsters many times its own mass, it burrows rapidly into flesh by the combined action of repeated eversion, muscular contraction and a corkscrewing motion, shredding a ragged tunnel through the body of its prey until it detects a cessation of movement. Whether the subject has expired or merely lost consciousness, the diminutive killer bursts free the moment it feels confident enough that its "leftovers" won't be able to pursue it, and secludes itself in the nearest hiding place it can find..

  An unfed Gruesance is extremely high-energy, and can starve to death in a matter of hours if it can't find a source of meat. Once it has eaten, it can slow down and digest what it has collected for days or weeks, by which point the remains of its previous meal may still be a hot spot for both larger scavengers and their even larger predators.

  A Gruesance lives indefinitely for as long as it can find enough food, and only rarely reproduces if it literally bumps into another Gruesance within the innards of the same prey. The two monsters are irresistibly drawn to turn on one another, and the victor of the cannibalistic skirmish enters a prolonged stasis during the digestion of its "mate's" tissues, its entire body hardening into a rubbery egg sac as it slips away in a pleasant dream-state. Days later, up to fifteen juveniles will tear their way free from their parent and part ways in search of their own first meal.

BEHAVIOR:
An even slightly hungry Gruisance is in a constant state of panic, certain this will be the day it finally succumbs to starvation or that its next target will be the one to dispatch it first. The moment it makes contact with flesh, its terror gives way to a state of such rabid zeal that it all but forgets its own mortality, unconcerned by death or injury as long as it can gorge on meat and entrails to the bitter end. A feasting Gruesance removed or ejected mid-meal erupts into a blind rage its tiny form can barely contain, squealing with fury while it thrashes like a fish out of water.

  Only during the digestion process does a Gruesance finally experience contentment, ruminating on the beauty of life's simplest joys. It will venture outside in this state only to collect "homey" items to decorate its temporary den, such as dried mushrooms, flower petals and teeth.

Concept Notes:

Bonnie actually came up with "Gruesance" as a possible name for what became Gazzird, but the notion of a "gruesome nuisance" immediately made me think something very small that eats in a very grisly way, making it almost the polar opposite of Gazzird's ability to ingest almost whatever it wants.

This made me think of the high metabolism and orneriness of shrews, especially the hero shrew known for its absurdly strong skeletal structure. I wanted it to eat through flesh in a really unpleasant way, and thought of the various invertebrates like priapulid worms, acanthocephalans and various polychaetes whose tooth-coated proboscis essentially "unrolls" like a sock.

GAMEPLAY BLOCK:

Let's go ahead and talk a little more from here on out about the gameplay features, without spoiling them all completely! The "INVADE" block allows a monster to do exactly what Gruesance does in its lore; a successful attack "enters" the opponent, during which they automatically suffer every effect attached to the block with no chance to evade or counter-attack. Something else can try to target the invader, but will of course damage the "host" in the process. The only limitation of INVADE is that it only works on something at least one size category larger than the invading monster...but monsters don't mechanically come any smaller than "minuscule" :)