Monsters and Creatures

Ice Worm

Ice worms are 6' long glassy worms, than can eat almost anything, but strongly prefer warm meat. Not troubled by the thin atmosphere, they are lightning fast, and ooze a paralytic slime all over their body. Although this slime looses its function quickly when exposed to air, it is quite effective in the few rounds before it breaks down, and the worms secrete a small, but unlimited amount. Save vs poison to avoid, and each contact with a worm requires a new save. Once the poison takes hold, the victim quickly faints and remains unconscious for 3d4 rounds. Once this happens, the worms begin to feed (unless more prey is still around).

The worms attack by smashing into a target full length, to maximize the target's exposure to the poison. Disregard non-magical armour for this, and apply a 10% of contacting the poison for every point over the minimum the worm needed to hit. The worms are very sensitive to heat, and can sense pray a mile away. Since they hasten (often underground) towards the target at top speed, most people will find themselves surrounded by ice worms within 10 minutes after landing.

When no people are around, and food is otherwise scarce as well, the worms go into hybernation, in which state they can survive for decades.

When food is plentifull, the worms quickly mate and soon after reproduce, laying 3d20 fist-sized eggs. Although the eggs mature in months, they will not actually hatch until a heat source (ie, life) comes within 10m of them. Then the foot-long worms hurry to their very first breakfast (they have only 1 hp, but are otherwise identical to the adults).

Found on Gester, Seesha's sixth moon.

Starflower

Starflowers are huge, colorful globes drifting through space. They are breathtaking to behold, but extremely dangerous.

Combat: A starflowers can sense the use of magic or any other form of energy from 100km away. It is invariably attracted to the strongest source, moving towards it at full speed. A starflower "attacks" by draining the energy it detected, starting with any active magic; the helm when the source is a spelljammer ship. The starflower will feed at a rate of 6 spell levels per round, or more, if it is the target of any magical attack, which it simply absorbs. It takes one round per level of the helmsmage for the starflower to completely drain the helm, although the helm itself goes down (and the helmsmage faints) the moment the starflower begins to feed. Once the helm is "eaten", the starflower randomly drains all magic items aboard (including the helm), until those too are completely finished, and then the spells from any spellcasters around, followed by any other energy source (like fire) of the ship. Whereupon the starflower will start to drain the life-energy of those aboard at a rage of 1 level per round.

Any spells, prayers, magical or psionic effects used at the starflower are absorbed harmlessly and used to feed the monster as well. Note that the creature makes no difference between wizardly or clerical magic, or psionic powers. The creature is normally vulnerable to physical attacks, but can use the energy it drains to heal itself at a cost of 3 spell levels or other magic effects per hit point. This makes it extremely hard to kill. Since there is the continueous danger that the flower will drain the helm itself, leaving the ship stranded even if they kill the creature, it is highly feared among all races.

Habitat/Society: Starflowers are solitary, plant-like creatures, mostly drifting through space. They use their bright, luminescent colours to attract others of their kind in order to mate (which consists of both sides releasing a cloud of spores which merge and fertilize each other). The more a starflower eats, the brighter it glows and the more spores it can produce. A hungry starflower is barely visible, making it more dangerous still.

Starflower seedlings feed on solar energy (and even adults can use light to stave of starvation), orbiting around the primary like colorful balls. When they reach about 1m diameter in size, the become capable of spelljamming and gain the use of the terrible draining powers of the adult. Most ships will shoot a seedling on sight, and any predator will eat them, but since at this stage the starflower looks like any other chunk of rock, quite enough of the creatures survive to adulthood.

Ecology: Starflowers are a strange cross between animal and plant (or fungus, to be exact), native to space. Their most dangerous enemies are the voidspiders, who lure the starflowers into their webs by imitating the bright coloration of a well fed starflower. The spiders are not actually immune to the draining effects of the starflowers, but since their first attack consists of drugging the thing, they have little trouble with their prey. The dried (or sucked out) husk of a starflower can be used to replace all kinds of ingredients in light-related magical effects. The draining effect dies with the creature.

Voidspider

Voidspiders are the creatures that gave Webspace its name. Living on the inside of the crystal sphere, they weave their huge webs in space. Reaching 30m and more (not counting the legs), voidspiders are gargantuan, jet-black spiders, preying on anything caught in their webs.

Combat: Voidspiders attack by spitting a stream of sticky web strands, enveloping and immobilizing the prey. Treat as a Web with a 30m diameter. This is done while the spider is still some distance away; about 100m. Then, the voidspider will grab and eat small prey (roughly man-sized), while large prey is grabbed and bitten, which injects an anesthetic poison (no save). Note that the spider may attempt to "poison" the ship this way during combat. If opposed, the spider can attempt to grab individual opponents and eat them (normal attack rolls), or spew forth another web, up to a total of 3 per day. The spider's limbs are extremely agile, and the spider can turn full circle with blinding speed, making a rear attack virtually impossible. The creatures' size makes it very difficult, if at all possible, to surround. A hit with one of its 2 front paws does 1d10 HP of damage, and on a 16 or better the hapless creature is grabbed and eaten. Voidspiders have their own field of gravity, which may affect combat in the normal ways.

Habitat/Society: Voidspiders live on the inside of the crystal sphere, where they build their huge, luminescent nests. These nests are very bright, and form some of the stars of Webspace. This light is caused by the young spiders inside the nest, learning to spelljam, and by the male voidspiders living in the nest. Voidspiders have a natural SR of 7, which they use to travel the sphere spinning their webs. When 'jamming, a voidspider's abdomen glows brightly in an intricate and colorful pattern. This is a natural side effect, which the spiders use to lure their favorite prey, the starflowers, into their webs.

Voidspiders lay 6-36 eggs, 1m large ivory globes, which they put in common nests. These nests are build, inhabited and guarded by the males, who lack true spelljamming power, able only to attain tactical speed. The males, who are only 10m in size, rarely leave the nest they were born in, helping their male relatives to guard the nest and feed the young. The strongest male mates with any female dropping by, while weaker males carry off the freshly fertilized eggs.

Occasionally, a group of young males will wander off and build their own nest elsewhere. This is a very dangerous business, as the relatively small males are prey to a host of other creatures, not to mention their own companions, all of whom want to become the dominant male of the new nest. Also, the bigger and brighter the nest, the farther it can be seen and the more females it will attract.

Female voidspiders travel through the entire sphere, in their endless hunt for starflowers, the jeweled globes that form their favorite food. Since starflowers prefer to live close to the sun, that is where the spiders go as well to spin their huge webs. A voidspider web is typically 3 to 8 km in size, with crisscrossing strands every 10m or so. New, fresh strands are translucent, sticky and very strong, capable of stopping a spelljammer ship in full flight. As the strands age they lose their stickiness, and become opaque, as they gather spacedust and debris. Such old webs are often abandoned, and the voidspider moves on to make a new web elsewhere. A web is usually spun between loose rocks, each about 10m across, and set to a slow spin to keep it open. New strands themselves are very hard to detect; a chance of 1 in 10 (adjusted by any suprise modifiers).

The rocks, or rather the circle they form, are somewhat easier to spot; a chance of 1 in 6. There is however a 50% chance that the spider sits in the middle of the web, and glowing brightly. This successfully lures starflowers to the web, but is a dead give-away to the more experienced spacefarers. Abandoned webs of course never have a spider in them, but are still a real problem to get out of. Once a female has gorged herself completely, she will pick the nearest nest-star and go there to mate.

Voidspiders breathe oxygen like most creatures, and will occasionally dip into an atmosphere to replenish its air envelope. The chances of actually encountering one in mid air are very small however, since their spinning webs would crash the moment the spider takes a nap. In general, the spiders avoid gravity wells.

Ecology: Voidspiders are predators living mainly on the dangerous starflowers. Individual spiders can become a hundred years or more in age, and produce about a hundred eggs during their livetime. The eggs hatch roughly a year after being laid and fertilized, and the young will stay in the nest for a decade. Males may stay all of their lives, hoping to grow strong enough to kick out the dominant male, or leave with their clutch brothers to start on their own. The females leave as soon as they are able to, never to return.

Voidspider silk can be made into a number of items, from sails to socks, that will never wear out, and are very resistant to damage in general. The glue from the strands forms a basic ingredient to Sovereign glue.