Flow Barnacle

Flow barnacles are named for the flame-sea where most of them are found. They look like the limpets and barnacles of earthly shores, but they are bigger, seldom smaller than a person's head, and they also resemble young void krakens, though the two are unrelated. Shells are ivory or orange, rosy when the creature is young or hurt, and darkening to brown or black as it nears death. A crew that spots pale triangular points jutting from the hull where none were before should assume it has picked up one barnacle, or forty.

A flow barnacle eats metal and organic matter with equal appetite, so it threatens hulls, the contents of storage chests, anyone drifting sealed in softwood, and, less often, travelers themselves. It has no cunning or agility. It simply bumps into targets, or squeezes out a jet of trapped air or moisture to spurt toward the closest living thing at its listed speed.

On a hit it locks on and pushes out three small parrot-like beaks, each biting for 2 points of damage. Every round after that each beak drains 1 more hit point of blood or other nutrients until the barnacle is pulled away or its prey is drained dry. Dead barnacles come off easily. Prying off a live one takes a combined Strength of 33 applied for a full round, usually several people heaving together, and tearing it loose deals 2d4+1 points of damage to its victim.

These creatures do nothing but float, stick to solid objects and feed, sifting organic debris with sticky feelers and soaking up moisture and starlight. Too much heat, air or light bothers them, though only heat actually hurts them as it would a human, so they keep away from worlds of every kind. A well-fed barnacle grows an egg-sac inside its body full of tiny soft-shelled young, which it lets loose into space when it finds warmth, moisture and starlight.

Some void-dwelling creatures, and hungry adventurers, crack the shells to eat the muscular foot and body inside, which tastes rubbery, somewhere between chicken and squid. A few humans react violently to the meat; treat this as a mild poison.

One barnacle in four carries a moonpearl, a flawless blue-white gem grown around a bit of grit that slipped in through the feeler hole and lodged in the slick black inner body. A barnacle makes only one in its life, over 2d4 years, and the pearl may be anything from thumb-sized to fist-sized, worth 1,000 to 5,000 gp by size, shape and color. The tough body-plates serve as shields and bucklers, and the central feeler hole is a natural mount for a dagger point or a firing port for a wheel-lock barrel; human pirates and hippo-headed mercenaries often fix plates permanently to such weapons. Distilled barnacle essence is one ingredient in sovereign glue.