Flareater

Flareaters may be green slime that some wizard's experiments reshaped and woke into intelligence. Their glossy skin is truly a deep emerald, but in the gloom underground it reads as nearly black. A typical specimen is a sheet up to 6 feet wide and no thicker than three inches, and it is oddly warm to the touch.

They move far faster than other jellies and oozes, streaming over floor, wall and ceiling the way a flood runs downhill, and they can easily catch someone on foot. Witnesses describe the sight as deeply unsettling, like evil water gliding up stone. Flareaters have no spoken language and seem to talk to one another with rippling pulses that pass through their bodies.

A flareater may drop from above, imposing a -3 penalty on its victim's surprise roll, or it may shadow a party along the ceiling while it sizes them up and picks its first target. Once it latches on, it digests flesh completely in 2d8 rounds, with no saving throw allowed. It deliberately seeks gaps in armor and clothing to reach bare skin first, leaving gear for dessert. Metal dissolves at an inch per 4 rounds, wood at an inch per 6 and leather at an inch per 8; each point of magical bonus on the item adds a round. Scraping it off with tools does not work the way it does with green slime, since the creature simply starts eating the scraper.

Light draws it above all. If a target carries a torch or lantern, the flareater flows over the light and falls on it, snuffing it out without harm from the flames, and gains 1 Hit Die for every mundane light it engulfs. It also drinks magical light simply by entering a spell's area, which ends the effect. Light, fire and heat spells, from fireball and minute meteors to flame strike, do it no damage at all. Dancing lights, moonbeam, faerie fire and glitterdust each add 1 Hit Die when absorbed or cast at it, and light, continual light and sunray add 2. Its THAC0 rises with its Hit Dice. Cold magic is the weak point: any cold-based spell paralyzes it for 2d4 rounds.

At 12 Hit Dice the creature divides into two 6 HD flareaters. The split takes 4 full rounds and cannot be stopped once begun; if it is wounded in the meantime, share its remaining hit points between the two offspring.

Eating and multiplying are the whole of a flareater's existence. It reproduces asexually by fission, as described above, and lives in damp caves, roaming toward any source of light. No more than four are found together, as they spread out so each has enough to eat. Some sages think that hours of full sunlight might dry one up entirely, since its body seems made for darkness and humidity.

Wizards sometimes hunt flareaters, dead or alive, hoping to use them as components for spells such as create darkness and shapechange, or in potions of fire immunity. Rumor holds that vast colonies thrive far below the surface.