DeGleash [Plasmoid]

DeGleash favor a fat-bottomed, narrow-topped shape, white to cream, that bobs constantly. They skip legs, flowing along at movement 9, and grow short stalklike arms only when there is something to handle. Two eye ganglia sit high on the body and hearing nerves are scattered everywhere. Waste seeps through the thin skin, and a mouth is rare. General traits appear under Plasmoid Overview.

A deGleash can grow four arms of 18/01 to 18/50 Strength, or devote every fiber to one slow muscle and lift 10,000 pounds for 1d4 rounds. It forms or absorbs limbs as fast as a man moves an arm, can make tendrils 1/16 inch thick, and lets a net sink right through it by unhooking fibers around the strands.

Its brain is its least flexible part, yet it squeezes quickly into a tube 5 inches across and a foot long, or over several hours stretches to pass a 1-inch hole, its limit. A foot-wide opening takes a round. In a round a man-sized one can reach 50 feet up (large 75, huge 100). A medium deGleash weighs 2,000 pounds, a large one 4,000 and a huge one 8,000, and it can hold 1,200 pounds of gear inside if it fits in a cubic yard. It cannot jump but climbs walls at 90%. To sleep it grows a chalky shell that keeps it from spreading; too brittle for armor, it is reabsorbed on waking.

It uses 1d4 arms without penalty; each extra arm imposes -2 on all. It likes two pseudopod fists and two shields (AC 0), hitting at full force out to 8 feet and losing 2 damage per foot beyond. Its AC comes from bending away from blows, even opening into a ring.

Excitement makes it boom; listeners who fail a save vs. petrification are filled with dread, taking a 2-point penalty to their combat rolls. After a round of concentration it can unleash a great boom that deafens everyone within 20 feet for 1d20 rounds unless they save vs. paralyzation, worsening their AC by 2.

It can engulf a foe at least one size smaller with a THAC0 roll modified only by the victim's Dexterity. Inside, the victim takes 1d8 per round from digestion and may suffocate. Concentrating, it squeezes with Strength 20 for 8 more points each round. A victim not being squeezed can move with a bend bars roll; one being held needs three consecutive successes.

Piercing weapons do nothing, slashing half, bludgeoning full. Fire does double, and each 10 dice of cold damage slows it by 1. Like all plasmoids it ignores disease and poison, and acid harms it only above 30 points in a round.

Their culture follows the general plasmoid pattern.