Giant Space Hamster

It is just what the name says: a thick-furred rodent the size of a brown bear, muscular yet plump-looking. Most are golden brown, white on the belly, with white bands and spots. Its cheeks can stash as much as 200 lbs. of food. It turns up wherever tinker gnomes have settled.

Its only weapon is a nasty bite, and domestic hamsters are such cowards they rarely use it. Wild ones make short charges at anyone near a burrow, and tame mothers guarding litters have morale 9. If a bite on a careless gnome handler has an attack roll of 19 or higher, the hamster tucks the gnome into its cheek. He can climb out on a later round with a successful open doors Strength roll, or simply waits, drenched in drool, to be spat out like stale gum when food appears.

A pack holds 1d4 adults; the first is female and sexes alternate after that, so a trio means a male and two females. Each adult female brings a 20% chance of 1d4 young (3' long, size S, HD 1, AC 10, MV 3, no attacks) and a separate 20% chance of 1d4 juveniles (6' long, size M, HD 2, AC 9, MV 6, THAC0 19, one 1d4 bite). They have several litters a year, mature in two years, and remain fertile until they die at no more than 18. Keeping the sexes apart is the only birth control gnomes know, a lesson from a 22-year study that killed five researchers.

They fill the place of big browsers such as elephants and rhinos but mostly cannot defend themselves, so wild herds frequently vanish in spite of their breeding rate. Large and medium carnivores hunt them. Neither disease nor parasite, mundane or magical, can touch them, and cold weather puts them to sleep for as long as six months.

A committee of gnome researchers designed them as a placid animal strong enough to wind the huge rubber bands on the running wheels that drive gnomish starships by torque, work once done by teams of gnomes. The hamsters ran for hours and soon spread through space. Gnomes find the meat, spaham, delicious and eat it at almost every meal, and many ranches raise the beasts as livestock.

Gnome breeders splice enchanted material from other monsters into hamster bloodlines, and rival communities compete for the oddest results. Most are cosmetic: woolly, chartreuse, mottled, three-toed, plaid, ochre, albino, cave-dwelling, flightless, eastern, western, greater, lesser, and every degree of spotted. The rest:

Armor Plated: hairless with rhino hide (AC 3), aggressive (morale 16). Invisible: once a day goes invisible for 1d4+4 turns and stays unseen while attacking. Great Horned: nose horn deals 1d12 when charging over 30 feet. Miniature: house-pet size (hp 1, MV 1, AC 10). Subterranean: burrows at MV 6 through anything as hard as soft rock, claws 4d4/4d4. Yellow Musk: reeks, and wraps itself in a poison cloud 30 feet in radius; failing a save vs. poison brings weakness (Strength down four levels), blindness (-4 to attack) and nausea (MV 3). Sabre-toothed: still omnivorous, fangs 2d8. Abominable: arctic albino conifer-eater, half damage from magical cold, none from normal cold. Ethereal: merely translucent, skeleton showing; first sight of it works like scare. Rather Wild: around non-hamsters, morale 19 and +2 on attack and damage rolls. Sylvan or Jungle: climbs any non-slick surface at MV 9, 99% success. Carnivorous Flying: bat wings (Fl 24 (8), MV 9), bite 3d4, two claws 2d4, morale 15.

Two-Headed Lernaean Bombardier: each head bites, it regenerates 3 hp per round (not lost parts), and once a day it belches so violently that everyone in a 30-foot radius must save vs. breath weapon or spend 1d4+1 rounds stunned, unable to move, attack or defend. Fire-Breathing Phase Doppelganger: three times a day breathes a fire cone 30 feet long and 10 feet wide at the end for 3d8 (save vs. breath weapon for half), and takes half damage from fire. Up to six times a day it shifts between the Prime Material and Ethereal in a single round, as a phase spider does, at -3 initiative; beating a foe's initiative by 5 or more lets it bite or breathe and vanish before retaliation. Foes in the Ethereal may strike it each round, at only -1 to its initiative. It can become any bear-sized mammal in one round, and with Intelligence 5-7 and morale 14 it learns its tricks fast.

Tyrannohamsterus Rex: harmless unless it panics and tramples someone (HD 16, AC 2, MV 9, THAC0 5, two attacks for 10d10, MR 90%, morale 3, 25' at the shoulder, 75 tons). Loud noise, bright light, fire or magic sends it smashing through all terrain for 1d4 miles. The colony that bred it, now gone, did so by its own account simply because it was there. Gnomes also whisper of the Hamster of Ill Omen, Shaggy Bartholomew, larger still, supposedly brilliant, a spellcaster with starhelm powers, and fond of flattening gnomes. They all fear him and laugh nervously when asked. The DM awards XP for every strain as he sees fit.