Argos

An argos looks like an enormous amoeba, 10 to 20 feet across and about 200 pounds per Hit Die, translucent blue to violet and smelling like a bouquet of flowers. A great central eye with a three-lobed pupil sits among a hundred lashless, inhuman smaller eyes and many toothy mouths. It extends pseudopods tipped with fanged mouths that serve as hands.

It slithers, clings to walls and ceilings, and can levitate and fly at a sluggish 3. Clearly an intelligent tool user, it wears nothing, stowing gear in temporary pockets inside its body, though its juices tend to ruin devices in two to three weeks (save vs. acid).

An argos attacks with one to three weapons or tools, or wraps a foe in a pseudopod and bites with 1d3 mouths for 1d4 each, doing this to as many enemies as it can reach. A natural 20 engulfs the victim whole, dealing 2d8 per round in digestive juices; cutting out takes 8 points of damage with a short edged weapon.

Like a gazer tyrant, it has magical eyes. It can turn 1d10 small eyes on a target; the central eye covers only a 90-degree arc ahead. About 20 distinct powers have been observed among its roughly 100 eyes, so many eyes share powers, rolled on 1d20 and treated as spells at a caster level equal to its Hit Dice. Each point of damage destroys one eye, the DM choosing which powers dwindle, and a specific eye can be targeted at -4 to hit. Once per round the central eye can use alter self as a personal illusion, color spray or ray of enfeeblement.

Argos live alone, though one sometimes guards a gazer tyrant ship. They share regions of the void between worlds with the gazer tyrant nations, can replenish their own air envelopes, and drift alone through asteroid belts and dust clouds.

For all its wits it is ruled by hunger. It feeds until it has eaten twice its Hit Dice in creatures, then withdraws to digest for two hours per Hit Die. If a week passes without food, it starts shrinking by 1 Hit Die weekly until only 5 HD remain; then it can crystallize its outer skin into a chrysalis and hibernate for up to a year.

It eats anything that moves and can be digested, preferring to lure prey into traps and pick victims off one by one. Afterward it sorts through their weapons and tools and keeps what it can use.