BONUS MONSTER 12:

Scalpel Ballet
DISEMBELLE

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!

Description:
This monster has a shape like a bipedal swan, but its "wings" are clublike limbs with clusters of different knife-like and lance-like giant teeth, rather than feathers. More teeth sprout in a clump on its chest, and what resembles a "skirt" or "tutu" is a set of gummy, many-fanged jaws. A darkly colored trunk emerges from within this maw, splitting into two legs that each balance on a single long tooth. The swanlike head has no mouth or nostrils, ending in a small pointed snout, with eyes that appear to be tightly closed with very long, frilly lashes.

BIOLOGY:
A classical arena monster, this lethal dancer was engineered to balance pure combat prowess with dazzling spectacle. Most of its body mass is anatomically a mouth and lips overgrowing a serpentine skeletal structure, its "arms" genetically analagous to a set of oral palps and its "legs" derived from an enlarged tongue, while the cranium contains only brain. What appear to be two perpetually closed eyes are strips of many tiny, black ocelli, extending into delicate feelers that serve dual function as eyes, ears and gyroscopic sensors. It constantly grows, sheds and replaces an array of elongated teeth from its jaws and palps, ranging from smooth-sided needles to flattened blades whose edges are nearly flawless at the microscopic level.

  The Disembelle's internal structure is extremely lightweight, its soft tissues honeycombed with air pockets that give its flesh a springy, foamy texture. Even its teeth are barely heavier than air, but their rigid nanostructure is finely adapted to evenly distribute pressure and slice through denser materials without sustaining damage. Only its stick-thin skeleton, muscles and sinews are dense and heavy, keeping it well grounded and its movements more powerful than they appear. Rather than traditional limb bones, its palps are supported by forks of its snakelike spinal column, its entire body flexible enough to contort and twist wildly as it dances, twirls, cartwheels and springs wherever it goes.

  The monster feeds on fresh meat and especially entrails in small portions at a time, slurped into its downturned maw as quickly as it carves them from still-living prey. Requiring relatively little energy to sustain its efficient metabolism, it often pirouettes to safety with a full stomach before the injuries are even noticed.

   Disembelle reproduce through a prolonged sparring ritual, each partner attempting to embed a single "love tooth" squarely in the heart of its partner. The first to succeed bares its chest to receive a tooth in turn, but the act is reciprocated only if the partner was satisfied enough with the complexity and challenge of the battle. A love tooth's nanomon payload dissolves the tooth and heals the wound as it fertilizes the recipient's egg cells, which develop into anywhere from two to six identical embryos lining the interior of its mouth. Its "kits" detect and memorize every movement of their parent as they grow, and when they're ready to be born, the Disembelle seeks out an "audience" of viable prey to witness - and feed - its offspring in their first spectacular debut.

BEHAVIOR:
Disembelle are easily assumed to take great pride in their dancing prowess, but the intricate physical coordination is of little meaning to them as the natural means by which they locomote as well as the default language by which they express their emotions. Rather, they consider such delicate maneuverability to be the matter-of-fact baseline of "intelligence," viewing most other creatures as clumsy simpletons. It is purely their teeth and their offensive prowess that they feel invested in; constantly sharpening them against one another, deliberately shedding their least favorite shapes and always practicing strategic use of the different blades against different opponents. The seemingly chaotic arrangement of their dentition is their primary measure of "beauty" among their own kind, no two Disembelle ever displaying precisely the same collection or perfect symmetry.

  A Disembelle's minimalized weight and inherent gyroscopic balance allows it to sleep upright on a single stilleto leg-tooth at a time, slowly swaying and rotating. Other creatures know to steer clear, as a slumbering Disembelle needn't even awaken to respond to respond with a furious whirl at the slightest disturbance.

Concept Notes:

An attempt at a monster that would be "cute" or "pretty" in a more traditional way while maintaining Mortasheen's basic principles, which is something I've tried to do more and more frequently. The internal rule of thumb is that if the rest of the monster looks relatively normal, it just has to have at least one major physical feature that reads as "grotesque."

It's a fun enough one that I kind of regret not fitting it into the first book in time, but again, you can consider all these monsters to be a ready-made Book One expansion anyway.

GAMEPLAY BLOCK:

Disembelle has the most body parts this month, and is also the first bonus monster to feature the "CREATE" block, allowing the monster to produce an item that other characters (monsters or otherwise) can pick up and use. :)