Colossus

A colossus is a roughly humanoid, 60-foot, 70-ton giant unrelated to ordinary giants, with a head too small and legs too short for its frame. Its features are heavy and lumpy: a sloping brow, a knob of a nose, crooked jagged teeth, and stubby fingers useless for fine work. Eyes and hair can be any color, though black is most common. It speaks slowly in a deep, rumbling voice that is still understandable.

Colossi dress in coarse, heavy tunics, breeches, and sandals in clashing colors, often patched over rips. The stitching is rough, yet far too skilled for any colossus to have managed. They never carry weapons or wear armor, though nothing stops them.

A colossus lumbers so slowly that it moves only a third as fast as its 30-foot stride suggests, and that sluggishness also makes its THAC0 poor. It gets a single punch or stomp every second round, and smaller targets are harder for it to land on: -2 to their AC if shorter than 25 feet, -4 if shorter than 10. Any victim it does hit must save vs. death magic or die, on top of taking damage, and every blow can do structural damage. Blunt and smashing weapons have no effect on it.

Clapping its hands, it unleashes a shock like a nearby explosion. Everyone within 60 feet must save vs. paralyzation or be stunned for 1d3 rounds, and all of them are deafened for 1d6 turns regardless. Thrown boulders deal 5d10 at ranges as far as 500 yards, though its aim is so bad it seldom connects.

These simple wanderers are met alone, usually lost. Each talks of a home called Hollowmere, presumably a planet, but none can explain how to get there or how it went astray, and no one has ever found the place. Their tales of close families suggest a clan society. Since they plainly did not sew their own clothes, many scholars guess they were the laborers or slaves of some other race, though there is no proof. The void artisans claim responsibility for the colossi's plight.

Good colossi are friendly and helpful to travelers; evil ones are destructive raiders who wreck things for fun. Neither kind is bright, and their only long-term aim, returning to Hollowmere, is one they have no idea how to pursue.

In the void a colossus is effectively its own ship, holding as much air as a 15-ton vessel while breathing as much as a crew of 10, so it can drift for months. Food and water are the real problem. It can travel only by leaping off a solid surface, so it moves very slowly on its own. Fitted with a starhelm, it becomes a starship of maneuverability class E, and its gravity plane makes its back or belly the deck.

No one has seen a colossus fall ill or die except from wounds. There are two sexes, yet no child has ever been seen, and they show no sign of aging in the few centuries they have been known. They can eat almost any plant. Evil ones also eat meat, apparently not from need but to frighten others.