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CLASS: BIOCONSTRUCT
BIOLOGY: Bloated with symbiotic bacteria, this monster's swollen body steadily cultivates skin lesions that grow over with multiple layers of specialized tissue, developing into complex "blistars" with their own functional nervous web, muscular lattice and sharp, hollow teeth. Plucking these pseudoorganisms from its body, the Scarbuncle utilizes them as deadly weaponry that it may hurl through the air or set as stationary traps. Once opened, a blistar reacts to any physical contact by violently contracting its lobes, forcing its toxic liquid contents through its teeth. A Scarbuncle prefers to feed on soft organisms such as mollusks, cnidarians, slimes and fungi, especially dead or decaying specimens that nourish its bacteria. Mating occurs when Scarbuncle break open and drink the contents of one another's blistars, a deeply personal act with an extremely intoxicating effect to its own kind. Once fertilized, the creature will cease to produce normal blistars, generating a number of gelatinous eggs in their place. BEHAVIOR: A Scarbuncle considers every blistar a unique, finely crafted creation that improves in quality the longer it is allowed to "ripen," and can be finicky about dietary or environmental factors that might disrupt its microbial processes. Though no significant difference in toxicity can be found between individual blistars, the creature is sure that a sophisticated enough being can appreciate the subtleties before it perishes. APPLIANCE: A Scarbuncle is amazingly crafty with its natural capabilities, devising uses for its snapping boils beyond the immediately obvious. It may utilize them as powerful tools to clamp objects together, scale surfaces, weigh down sensitive objects, blind, suffocate, startle or distract creatures otherwise impervious to their effects, and may even know a number of emergency culinary uses for the growths. BLISTAR MINE: the monster can leave one of its living, biting blisters lying in ambush. THROWING BLISTAR: the monster can hurl one of its blisters through the air to bite and envenomate whatever it collides with.   Contents copyright Jonathan Wojcik
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