Bloodsac

Sages call them haagathga, and sailors call them star vampires. A bloodsac is a formless, throbbing bag of fluid wrapped in a faintly translucent membrane of blue-black. Thousands of tiny suckers with sharp rims cover its skin, each flecked with silver or yellow, so the creature looks like a drifting scrap of starry sky. A familiar whiff of blood clings to it. Bloodsacs have no language.

Packs of bloodsacs hunt the void between worlds, sensing warm bodies with infravision and gliding without a sound toward starships, most often vessels orbiting a planet. Their camouflage imposes a -2 penalty on foes' surprise rolls. A lookout gets a single chance to spot the swarm before it strikes, with a 1% chance for each point of his higher score in Intelligence or Wisdom. Bloodsacs prefer to hit from behind for +2 to attack.

A hit means the suckers dig in and drink, dealing 2d10 damage, and every round thereafter the attached blob deals another 2d10 automatically with no roll. It hangs on until the victim is empty or someone tears it loose with a successful Strength check, which costs the victim an extra 1d10 as the suckers rip out. As it fills, the blob shifts from dark blue to an unhealthy violet.

When the body is dry, the bloodsac extends a tube into the base of the skull and spends one round drawing out the brain fluid before flying off, full for the moment. That fluid holds the victim's memories. A character later raised from the dead comes back with full hit points but no sense of self, functioning as 0-level in THAC0, saves, skills and proficiencies. He keeps the basics of daily life and one language, likely Common. Restoration or a wish returns the lost memories, as does catching the guilty bloodsac and pouring its fluid over the body before the raising.

No leader guides a swarm; the rest simply trail whichever member has locked onto food. They roam the void forever, never sleeping, building no lair, and never landing on a world, since gravity crushes them into slow, slumping heaps of jelly.

Every warm-blooded race fears these parasites. Each bloodsac that kills a victim has a 50% chance of being female and seeding the corpse with 6d6 eggs. In 2d6 days the young burst out of the body, ravenous, with 1 HD apiece and a 1d8 blood drain per round. Mind reavers are fascinated by the brain-draining trick, and some keep trained bloodsacs, a deadly pairing.