BONUS MONSTER 21:

Polycranial Trapmaster
SKULTIVATOR*

CLASS: BIOCONSTRUCT

Free, additional supplementary monsters for the Mortasheen Tabletop RPG Core Rulebook, created by Jonathan Wojcik, additional writing and all gameplay stats by Bonnie Saucier. For use with the gameplay system by Morgan Mullins!

*An entirely different monster previously had the name Skultivator, but will eventually get a new name!

Description:
This monster has a body like a hunched, pinkish slug. Its only appendages are two large club shaped arms with three-fingered hands it employs as legs, with a single hooked claw on the third finger of each. Its head is flat, tapering and boneless, like a floppy tongue, with drooping eyeless sockets. The head forks into two long, thin tassels of flesh. The monster's back is pocked with lumps and holes, many of them housing what appear to be pale skulls embedded under its skin.

BIOLOGY:
This monster's skeletal structure technically grows backwards, its "forearms" anatomically a set of hind legs attached to a huge, heavy pelvis in its upper body. The fractalized spinal column splits into dozens of branches under the thick blubber of its back, continuously growing multiple skulls that break free and migrate to the outer epidermal layers. Retained in skin pockets until needed, complete or "ripened" skulls are armed with a paralyzing venom, powerful internal jaw muscles and ganglia that can operate independently of the creature's nervous system, allowing it to hide or bury "snapskulls" in its path as traps for potential meals.

  Engineered for hunting, the monster is heavy and slow moving but strong and patient. Lacking a skull or teeth in its cranium, it feeds only on entrails sucked from dying or freshly killed prey items, slicing them open with its hooked claws once they have been adequately incapacitated by its traps.

  A Skultivator reproduces only when it dies, its oldest and most developed skulls fleeing the body of their own volition. Each will develop its ganglia into a single embryo, which will grow to completely surround and digest the original skull as it builds its own new skeleton.

BEHAVIOR:
Focused and vindictive, this brutal hunter has been known to single out a prey item and stalk them so relentlessly that it may wear down and starve before it willingly gives up the chase. A feral specimen will always operate alone, patrolling the same territory on a nightly schedule to feast on whatever it has trapped and leave the remains to serve as bait.

  A Skultivator likes to keep the bones of past prey in a central pit, and will sleep atop them or even buried in them.

Concept Notes:

I've always kept a text file full of potential monster "gimmicks" that don't have designs yet. One of these prompts sitting around for many years just read "grows and sheds biting skulls," and finally got a design concept roughly two years ago. I wanted to make sure you could tell that there wasn't any skull in its actual head, so I designed it to be tongue-like, saggy and droopy like it was melting, and it also kind of comes out reminiscent of a ghostly face. I knew it would be sort of a "persistence hunter," and Bonnie pushed the idea a little further by suggesting a Jason Vorhees or Leatherface vibe for its personality, the big quiet kind of horror killer.

The name, as mentioned, was already taken by a past monster, one that grows microorganisms in its head. But a monster that literally cultivates skulls couldn't possibly be called anything else, so we're just going to swap the names around once we come up with something more appropriate for the "other" Skultivator.