Focoid

A focoid is three clear globes of jelly linked in a short row, with a tiny mouth at the front of the chain. It is so transparent that it can only be spotted, and then only vaguely, when it moves across the starfield and bends the light behind it. It is hardest of all to see when it sits between a viewer and a bright star, which is exactly where it likes to attack from. A recent meal stays visible inside until it is fully digested, giving the creature away for a while.

Each globe can be stretched, squashed, flattened into a lens or left round. The shifting shapes may express mood or serve as some form of signaling.

The mouth is useless as a weapon. A focoid fights only by flattening its sections into lenses and concentrating starlight on a target, so it needs a bright light source to attack and rarely strays from suns and other fire bodies. Out in deep, dark space it has no attack at all and usually passes unnoticed.

Each of the three sections can fire once per round at its own target, out to five hexes (2,500 yards), for 1d12 points of damage or 1-2 hull points. Neither the creature nor its beams are easy to see, so fights tend to start with several rounds of the victims trying to work out where the heat is coming from. Missile fire against a focoid takes a -3 attack penalty, but melee attacks do not, since up close it is fairly easy to see.

It can only shoot while it is lined up between a star and its target. If maneuvered out of that position it cannot fire, and it weighs its chances: it withdraws if the odds look poor and presses on if a meal seems likely. A focoid that is not firing cannot be located by sight.

Focoids are born, live and die in space, always alone; they have never learned to hunt together. They attack only for food and hold no grudge against any race, but nearly every spacefaring people hates them as a hazard to navigation. Many ports pay a bounty of up to 500 gp for each focoid carcass.

All focoids are of one sex, yet it takes three adults to make a new one. Each grows a fresh sphere, the three spheres are fused into a newborn, and the parents then go their separate ways. Focoids are carnivores.