BONUS MONSTER 23:

Turncoat Fever-Farmer
STREPTILE*

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!

*The original "Streptile" was renamed Antiseptile for the book, since that made more sense with its antibiotic powers...but obviously, something still needs to step in and be the "Streptile" again!

Description:
This monster has a fat, slimy toad-like body with two long, knob-tipped feelers. Its mouth opens vertically into two slimy lobes, lined with fleshy knobs that each house a single, retractable black needle. Its round, lidless eyeballs are inside the mouth, and a ragged looking vertical orifice between them foams with paler green slime.

BIOLOGY:
The Streptile is a more specialized, mutated Antiseptile that evolved through symbiosis with a degenerated strain of Botularia, a Fectoid-class monster, that adapted resistance to Antiseptile biochemistry and permanently colonizing its cavernous esophagus. Rather than the frothy antibiotic secretions of the Antiseptile, the monster's oral harpoons inject more concentrated antibiotic formula into the circulatory systems of prey along with millions of assimilated Fectoid cells, eradicating competition as the modified Botularia multiplies uninhibited. Sickened, weakened prey is subsequently swallowed whole at the first opportunity, providing nourishment to the "mother" Botularia thriving in its expandable gut, which in turn sustains the Streptile on its excess, expired biomass and other waste materials.

  With its needs constantly met by the Streptile, the assimilated Botularia no longer exhibits its natural life cycle, growing only as a plasmodial mass of cells that can be considered neither a complete Fectoid macroform nor an infection phase. The Streptile, meanwhile, has dedicated enough of its interior to Fectoid cultivation that it has lost the refined senses and diagnostic capabilities of Antiseptile.

  Fectoid-class monsters are energized rather than destroyed by the Streptile's bite; the faster-acting but short-lived antiseptic only purges a Fectoid's weakest cells first, leaving the strongest to feast on the introduced Botularia and regenerate more vigorously than ever.

BEHAVIOR:
Despite its more predatory behavior, Streptile is a calmer and more cautious monster than Antiseptile, preferring more patient ambush tactics and often hiding itself vertically in a soft, wet substrate, its maw flush with the surface. Once it has delivered a quick, stealthy bite, it follows the smell of sepsis until the prey is too feeble to resist ingestion.

  While still-living meals are preferred, the monster will scavenge if necessary, and also has a refined taste for cheeses.

Concept Notes:

Not too much to say here that I didn't say already! What we now call Antiseptile seems to be a fan favorite (I even ran into someone in real life by pure coincidence who knew what Mortasheen was and liked "Streptile" the most!) but its old name really implies a creature that either has or causes some kind of throat infection, so here's the new Streptile, which feeds things to the microbial culture living in its gullet. Bonnie suggested it lean harder into the concept of "superbugs" and that its disease colony should be an assimilated Fectoid, since Fectoids are common prey to its more hygenic cousin.