Meteorspawn

Meteorspawn are enormous spheres of living stone in black, earthy brown or slate gray. Even the smallest is at least 100 feet across, and rumor speaks of some thousands of feet wide. A round mouth opens on the front, and two smaller waste vents, each no more than a tenth of the creature's diameter, sit on opposite rear quarters. They may explain where at least some meteors come from.

Placid drifters, meteorspawn eat rock and minerals and take no interest in sailors or their ships. A meteorspawn is so thick-skinned and dull that it does not even notice an attack until it has lost a quarter of its hit points.

Only then does it fight back, firing meteors from its vents at tremendous speed. One under 1,000 feet across can roll to aim both vents at a foe; larger ones can bring only one to bear. A target in the line of fire is struck by 1d4 meteors for 3d10 each, and in ship combat each counts as a heavy catapult shot. Hit or miss, every shot sails off into the void, one more meteor loose in the world.

The mouth does not bite, but a ship that blunders into it, usually bow first, is sucked in. The ship must save vs. spell or lose the part inside the mouth as if to disintegrate, and every sailor in that section must also save or be disintegrated.

Waste rock collects in two sacs behind the mouth until they are full, then gets blasted out as high-speed boulders. In 5% of cases a meteorspawn has passed close enough to a world to drag some atmosphere along. It does not need air, so that envelope stays until grateful starhelm crews claim it.

A meteorspawn lives several centuries and carries 1d4 young the whole time. At the end of its life it cracks apart and the young emerge, a rare and marvelous sight; any one encountered has a 1% chance of being about to give birth. The young split the parent's size between them, so two each start at half its size, three at a third and four at a quarter.

Spacefarers see them as a mixed blessing. They clear away drifting rubble that endangers navigation, but they also create fast-moving meteors that smash ships, though at least they eat more rock than they expel. Some sailors take a birth as a lucky omen of life from death, and practically speaking the shattered parent offers enough rock for 2d10 shots for every catapult aboard, whatever its size.