Aballin

Sometimes called living water, an aballin at rest looks like a sizable pool of ordinary water, odd only in that nothing lives in it. Through the surface an onlooker can usually spot coins, rings and other metal left by earlier victims, seemingly free for the taking. It resembles a water elemental creature but is really a mild acid that dissolves organic matter over three weeks and leaves the metal behind, which is why water breathing does nothing to save someone drowning inside one. It has no language.

While passive, an aballin is indistinguishable from fresh water and can be hurt only by what would hurt water. Drinking from it, wading through it or reaching for the loot wakes it, and it instantly firms into a jelly-like pseudopod that lashes out to engulf the offender. On a hit, a man-sized or smaller creature is pulled inside and begins to drown under the normal drowning rules. It engulfs only one victim at a time.

In its jelly state it can be struck by blunt weapons of +1 or better. Edged weapons do nothing and carry a 25% chance of hitting the trapped victim instead. Someone inside can fight back but cannot avoid suffocating or use anything needing normal speech, spells included. Poison, paralysis, electricity, cold and fire do not affect it. Transmute water to dust forces a save vs. death magic or it dies, and lower water makes it save vs. spell or let its victim go at once.

Eyeless, it tracks prey by smell and vibration, so it ignores anything that works through sight: blindness, blur, color spray, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, most illusions and many others.

An aballin may pose as a puddle, a small pond, a fountain or even a drainage ditch, but it prefers damp caverns rich in water where it blends in. Submerged, it is naturally invisible, so it rests in pools and small bodies of water and travels rivers, streams and lakes hunting food. On land it oozes or hauls itself along by stretching out pseudopods, slug-fashion, leaving a faint slime trail. It cannot climb a slope steeper than 30 degrees.

They appear alone or in families of up to four. A mated pair, particularly one guarding young, may merge into a single creature with double size and Hit Dice.

Aballins help keep down dangerous creatures and plants near water, and they scavenge whatever remains they come across.