BONUS MONSTER(S) 19:
"GOBLEECHES"
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!
*TODAY'S ENTRY IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT!
First, a free preview page from the first book, followed by two new exclusive variations on this monster:
Click to Enlarge!
VARIANTS:
STRAWNOSE GOBLEECH
BRINEWEASEL
CLASS: BIOCONSTRUCT
Description:
This monster resembles a colorfully striped leech with a thin, tapering head end. It has two tiny humanlike arms mid-way down the body, and two soft, boneless looking hands on its rump with suckerlike fingers. It has two eyeballs on its head end and a long, barbed tongue coils out of its tiny, toothless mouth. Arranged in two vertical rows on its rump are six additional eyes
BIOLOGY:
Unlike the Bogweasel, the Brineweasel is derived from proboscis leeches; particularly the fish leeches common to Mortasheen's brackish and saltwater environments. Like its retronatural cousins, it lacks teeth or jaws but drills through the tissues of its prey with a protrusible proboscis covered in hundreds of minute, razor sharp thorn-like teeth. Though unable to bite like its jawed counterparts, its proboscis can easily penetrate tougher skin or armor plating, and its thinner body can slip even deeper into the wound or natural orifices as needed, often attacking the gills of aquatic creatures. Its posterior eyes are fairly nearsighted, but can watch for danger when its head is buried.
The Brineweasel gives live birth to up to fifty juveniles at a time, and its young will cling tightly to their parent with their posterior suckers, feeding on specialized nutrient-rich mucus until strong enough to hunt.
BEHAVIOR:
Brineweasel originated as an attempt to correct for the flaws of the original Bogweasel, and the more paternal brooding behavior of proboscis leeches ultimately lent itself to a more docile socially organized gobleech, but unfortunately too docile for an adequate Vampire Thrall, preferring extensive periods of inactivity between feedings. A feral Brineleech prefers passive, strategic feeding strategies; feeding from sleeping prey, lying in ambush for months at a time or clinging long term to large retrobiota such as sharks. Only a Brineleech with offspring displays slightly more aggression, especially once its young are clamoring for their first taste of blood and it has deemed them ready.
Rarely utilized as Vampire Thralls, Brineleech caught on more readily as fishing companions, serving as live tackle as they share every catch. They are cultivated en masse by the seafood manufacturer Scolex, where they assist other fishing and trawling monsters like specially trained Gazzird and the pseudoscorpion Arthropoid, Stingernail.
GAMEPLAY BLOCK:
SWALLOWING GOBLEECH
LOAMWEASEL
CLASS: BIOCONSTRUCT
Description:
This monster resembles a very large, fat leech with a broad, flattened head, sucker-fingered hands on its smaller tail end and two diminutive arms. It has tiny eyes at each corner of its wide mouth, its face almost like a giant salamander's.
BIOLOGY:
The largest of the gobleeches, the Loamweasel takes after terrestrial, predatory leeches like the Mimobdella, which typically feed on other soft-bodied invertebrates in cool, highly elevated habitats. It possesses only small, rudimentary jaws deep within its expansive maw, but its densely muscular body can tightly constrict, asphyxiate and even crush prey that it either strangles to death or immediately swallows whole. If necessary, its posterior digits can curl tightly together into a single fist, swung like a mace by its elastic tail with enough force to crack stone.
A Loamweasel produces egg cocoons like those of the Bogweasel, but has a compulsion to swallow them almost immediately, as it will almost anything organic that it encounters. Freshly hatched offspring have no difficulty escaping out their parent's pharynx however, their bodies too thin, soft and slick to be crushed.
BEHAVIOR:
The Loamweasel is technically the most obedient of the Gobleeches, though this is due to an especially sluggish metabolism, its multiple brains experiencing more of a hazy fog than a frantic anarchy. Its external behavior appears slow witted, inattentive and naive, often distracted by new input before the last thought finishes processing. It is consequently highly susceptible to trickery as its mind catches up to what is actually going on around it, and in many situations it will simply shove the nearest creature into its mouth rather than bother puzzling out the finer points of the situation. Regardless, they are employed by Vampires much more frequently than the other gobleeches.
The scent of annelid flesh makes the Loamweasel hungrier; any other monsters derived from leeches, earthworms or polychaetes will grab its attention before other available prey.
GAMEPLAY BLOCK:
Note from Bonnie: My dear editors and other sharp-eyed familiars might notice this, so yes, future publications will be putting a number after [APPEND] for how many points it is. It was maybe the only with multiple descriptor compatibility sans [COMBINE] that didn't already do that.
Concept Notes:
Bogweasel is in the old monster archives as a leech-based vampire, and its design was based on not just a leech, but on the face of a cookie cutter shark, and to a lesser but probably still noticeable extent, the look of the goofy leeches briefly seen in the movie Fern Gully, which I absolutely loved as a child:
DIE, ZAK, DIE, HAHAHA
When we decided to use Bogweasel in the first book, Bonnie and I both felt it worked better as a nasty little "Vampire Thrall," a subtype of Bioconstruct, than as a full fledged vampire in its own right, which would have otherwise made it redundant with book one's take on Bloodskipper anyway. Feeling that a leech monster deserved something a little special, given its connection to this website, I sketched both the variations you've seen here on the same day that I finalized Bogweasel's new design, and we almost considered working all three into the same book at once. Instead, you'll get Bogweasel in the book, and its two siblings as these digital-only bonuses. Digital-only until the hypothetical Mortasheen: Bestiary One project, anyway.
The new title "gobleech" isn't just a silly reference to the site though; it's meant to sound like "goblin leech," and references the fact that the different varieties are defined by their different mouths or "gobs." You can learn more about the different types of leeches in my own article on the subject, and the closing illustration I drew for that post was obviously also worked into these monsters.
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