BONUS MONSTER 05:

Fermenting Optocluster
PUTRIFEYEZ

CLASS: ZOMBOID

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

Description:
This monster resembles a sagging, grotesque head draped in its own long and greasy black hair. It has rows of toe-like protruberances instead of teeth, with no nose and lower jaw, and its face is dominated by two massive fleshy lump-like eyes that appear "stitched shut" but pale fang-like lashes. When its eye sockets open, they are crowded with inflamed looking eyeballs.

BIOLOGY:
The Putrifeyez moves ponderously on its many small digits, grazing on whatever material it can through a toothless, sucking mouth on its underside, but relies much more on its creeping, swarming eyes to gather more substantial nourishment. It seemingly evolved out of compounding errors in Zomboid development - an attempt by an organoid Zomboid to gestate and birth from another Zomboid embryo, rather than directly from a Zombie progenitor. Corresponding to ocular organoids, most of the monster's anatomy consists of two womb-like orbital cavities in which new eyeballs continuously bud off from its original or "queen" eyeballs, developing as Zomboids too stunted to completely break free from the monster's core consciousness. As the eyes multiply, older individuals are crowded out and break loose from the original mass, achieving only a dim awareness that mindlessly acts on the Putrifeyez' most recent desire...usually to eat.

  Swiftly slithering and leaping on their flexible tails, swarms of these "wandering" eyes absorb any organic particles they can locate before returning to the Putrifeyez to be devoured and recycled. Even bacterial films, fungi or animal waste will suffice, but the tiny demimonsters crave flesh as much as any other Zomboid and will hungrily mob any living prey they can chase down. By swelling with their own pus, the eyes explode in a burst of flesh-rotting Zomboid cells, and employ their natural regeneration process to quickly engulf the rapidly decaying tissues and necrotic fluids of their target.

  Only the eyes of prey are technically unaffected by the decomposition and digestion process, afflicted instead with a painfully oozing, blinding infection as the Zomboid scleral cells try and fail to colonize and assimilate the subject's own ocular tissue. The repeated invasion, death and rejuvenation of these undead cells can prolong the infection for days, and it can take months for infected eyes to finally stop itching or watering altogether.

  If its main body is under attack, a Putrifeyez may trigger its entire developing swarm to explode simultaneously, rupturing its own skull in a blast of necrotizing fluids and osteous shrapnel.

BEHAVIOR:
A Putrifeyez itself is technically blind, since it sees only through the swarming eyes actually constituting a distinct symbiotic monster, and it generally dislikes what it sees; it feels more comfortable in absolute darkness, keeping its eyelids tightly shut by day and releasing its swarms only under cover of nightfall whenever possible. When it must expose its eyes under better lit conditions, such as for self defense or trained combat, it can be heard continuously grumbling with distaste for the flood of visual information.

Concept Notes:

There are already two different monsters in the book whose eyeballs fight as independent creatures in different ways, while this is the fourth or fifth in Mortasheen canon overall and definitely won't be the last. It was a spontaneous idea I sketched once and immediately liked a lot, exactly as-is:

This is the first monster in the month to not be a bioconstruct, which means it doesn't get a "quirk!" It's also the first of our free bonus monsters to use the swarm ability block, which makes all its appended effects into one big area effect.