Floater

Picture a jellyfish that has learned to fly. A floater's clear, bulging body is about 2 feet across, trailing a mass of venomous tentacles as long as 3 feet. Only color tells the sexes apart: males usually carry a reddish blush, females a tan or yellow one. The creature stays aloft on hydrogen bladders beneath its body, steering with its tentacles and bell while small puffs of gas push it along.

Floaters eat plants and rarely pick fights unless something frightens or threatens them, but they handle themselves well when they must. Up to six tentacles can strike each round for 1d4 points apiece, and each hit forces a save vs. paralyzation; failure leaves the victim paralyzed for 2d6 turns.

All that hydrogen is a liability. Fire that hits a floater deals quadruple damage, with a 75% chance that the creature bursts into flame. An opponent in melee with it when that happens takes 1d8 points of damage, halved by a successful save vs. breath weapon.

A floater may use psionics in place of physical attacks. Its defense modes count as always on, so it can keep them running even in rounds when it uses its tentacles, as long as it has the PSPs to fuel them. Its psychometabolic powers are the science life draining plus the devotions displacement, flesh armor, double pain, chameleon power and mind over body. In telepathy it has the science psionic blast and the devotions contact, aversion, mind blank, psionic crush, life detection and intellect fortress.

They live on the mudflats that ring the silt sea, building nests of dead brush and timber or, now and then, inside living trees. Nests usually hold three to five floaters, and the biggest up to eight; they band together for defense against razorwings. Young are born singly. For six months the mother stays close, leaving only on short trips to gather food, and by six months old the youngster leaves to find a nest of its own. Ferns and roots from the damp parts of the flats make up most of their diet, supplemented with leaves and the odd berries or seeds from the few fruiting plants nearby.

Floaters sometimes nibble esperweed, which boosts their psionic powers by five levels (see the esperweed entry). The effect fades fast, so there is only a 2% chance per floater that adventurers meet one under its influence.

Razorwings, which dwell under the silt, hunt floaters more than any other prey. Researchers keep trying to tap the gas glands as a source of fuel, but so far nobody has made it work, and the creature yields nothing else of use.