Sunday, April 5, 2020

The Black Ooze: Mutating your PCs for fun and profit


Black Ooze
A viscous, tar-black substance that manifests in subterranean dungeons, streaming through walls or pooling in low pits. Smells like rust and cum, tastes too sweet, feels like body-temp liquid mercury. Any living thing submerged in the ooze undergoes hideous mutations. This explains the proliferation of freakish monsters, in certain dungeons.
·         If a single appendage or extremity is dipped in the ooze, only that extremity will be mutated.
·         The mutated parts of a creature are immune to further mutation by ooze.
·         If imbibed, whole body is mutated as if creature hand been submerged. Black ooze turns to inert dust, after a few minutes, if separated from large mass. Magic might preserve it for longer.
·         Mutated beings sometimes form cults around sources of black ooze. “The Nameless King of the Black Ooze” is depicted as a pillar of black ooze wearing a tarnished silver crown, and worshipped as a god of lepers, monsters, and outcasts.

Example Mutations: Here’s a few mutations I came up with, suitable for PCs. Make more of your own.
Body Cavity: Character’s front may split down the middle to reveal a hollow, tooth-filled inside, like a fleshy iron maiden. May attempt to trap human-sized or smaller grappled foes inside, for 1d6DMG per turn. May retract teeth to disguise a friend, like a suit of skin.
Worm-Gut: Your stomach inverts, projecting outward from your mouth, like a giant maggot, with ivory mandibles. 1d6DMG, 10’ reach. Attacks are acidic and dissolve most living tissue. No ill effects from eating any kind of flesh. Stomach regrows after a few days, if severed.
Weapon Fusion: One of your arms becomes a useless, clubbed stump, but merges with the melee weapon you were holding at the time of mutation. The weapon can retract into the stump, perfectly concealed.
Face Melt: Your head becomes a constantly churning, swirling mass of flesh and sensory organs. You may spend a minute sculpting it into a disguise. You can’t change the color of your features but may alter their size, shape, and position. The disguise begins to melt again, after 10 minutes, unless you spend a minute touching it up.
Parasitic Twin: A repressed part of your personality manifests on your body as a stunted twin, connected by a knot of tissue. Has a handful of abilities appropriate to the part of your psyche it represents- new languages, skills, or even a spell. Has goals of its own.

Black Ooze Monsters: Sometimes the black ooze will mutate the mind as well as the body, producing monstrosities like these.
Living Armor: A knight who exploded inside his full-plate and promptly went mad after merging with the metal suit. Corded veins and displaced organs occasionally leak from the gaps. Screams echo from within.
Crybaby: A feeble, naked adult body bent backwards by the weight of the giant, squalling infant head attached to its neck. Bludgeons anything in its path.
Cannibal Oak: A gnarled oak tree with branches that end in skeletal hands. The large knot in its trunk opens like a mouth, revealing a splintery hollow brimming with blood. Roots serve as tentacles. Hates anything made of flesh.
Longwolf: A mad wolf, as tall as a stag, with an elongated midsection, giving it the appearance of a furred, quadrupedal serpent. Attempts to surround its prey with its long body.
The Ridden: This faceless stallion has the upper body of a deranged human, protruding from where its cock should be. It will attempt to knock victims down so the human-part can tear them apart and devour them.
Anthropohydra: Resembles a headless, crawling giant, with human torsos sprouting from its back: a jubilant chorus which begs the PCs to merge with it.
Ooze Priest: A hooded figure wearing a black robe and thin, tarnished silver circlet. Its features cannot be discerned beneath the robe. Speaks with a calm, even voice. Encourages the PCs to bathe in the ooze. The other monsters ignore it.

The Prison of Kath
The remote town of Kath has failed to pay tribute to the Capital. No one has heard from the town since before the winter. Now that spring has melted the mountain pass, the PCs have been dispatched as an escort to the tax collector. None of the nearby settlements have been in contact with Kath, either, which disturbs those who have relatives there. There are whispers that the people of Kath have found religion and cut themselves off from the outside world. As they approach Kath, the PCs notice that its fields have not been worked and there are no animals grazing in the pasture. Many, small, fresh mounds dot the landscape. The city walls have been hastily fortified, and its gates are bound shut with heavy chains.
·         The town was built near an ancient military fortification, turned prison. The bowls of the prison open up into a cave complex, where a pool of black ooze was discovered. The prisoners, guards, and some of the townsfolk were mutated, many driven to madness and cannibalism. The prison chaplain leads a cult dedicated to the Nameless King of the Black Ooze, kidnapping the remaining townsfolk and hurling them into the slime pit, birthing new monstrosities. The chaplain wishes to overtake the surrounding countryside, creating a Zion of New Flesh, wiping away the cruel, petty vanities of the land’s old order. 
·         The Warden has turned into a corpulent, gluttonous beast, relishing human flesh. He pukes up humanoid slime-monsters. 
·         The Prison supposedly has a hidden vault, containing vast wealth of the old kingdom. (Not quite so vast, but a nice chunk of change.)
·          Also hides the legendary enchanted blade of an ancient general (Actually the cursed sword of the executioner, possessed by a monstrous ghost. The general had a minor, but useful enchanted spear, which PCs may discover.) 
·         One of the prison’s first inmates was a powerful sorcerer and alchemist, who may have been capable of creating a philosopher’s stone. (In truth, a minor magician who accidentally caused the black pool to form, long ago. Left behind a few useful potions and a spell or two.) 
·         The tax collector is actually a researcher for the capital city council and wishes to procure samples of black ooze and its mutated victims so that his masters may create an army of inhuman soldiers. He will only tell the PCs this if absolutely cornered. He explains away his doggedness by the fact that he is a candidate for the next city bursar and isn’t going to let a few freaks stand between him and a promotion.
The mounds in the fields are graves of victims sacrificed to feed an immense plant-creature, resembling a giant heart with adventitious roots.

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