Ontalak [Plasmoid]

Ontalaks grow a fibrous outer covering whose density can match anything from cloth to brass, and they shape it into whatever their prey finds tempting. In the void between worlds, the favorite disguise is a wrecked ship. Elsewhere they have posed as a wooden cottage in the woods, a ghost ship at sea or a haunted manor, and some absorb their covering and move into a real abandoned ship or house instead.

They are enormous; the smallest on record, at 16 Hit Dice, was as big as a small wasp-hulled starship, and most are bigger. They can stretch their pseudopods as far as their air envelope reaches. Inside they keep a large ball that works as a major starhelm when doused with concentrated ontalak acid. Overland they can flow like the deGleash, but their bulk limits them to movement 3. Between meals they go dormant and can last years without food. Plasmoid basics are covered under Plasmoid Overview.

An ontalak waits until a ship draws close or a crew boards, then attacks purely to feed. Huge pseudopods burst from hatches, deck cracks and other parts of the false vessel, each dealing 2d10. It can raise as many as the usual crew of the ship it imitates, but no more than two can strike a single man-sized foe. It sees through countless hairlike nerve endings on its pseudopods, which gives it a blurry picture and a THAC0 of 10. On a natural 20 it seizes the target and the GM rolls 1d4 to see what it does with him; one result is absorption, which deals 2d20 acid damage per round with almost no hope of escape, though a captive already holding a knife-sized or smaller blade can still strike back.

A plunger-tipped pseudopod, always ready, can clamp onto an enemy hull and pump acid into it for 1d6 hull damage per round while the ontalak concentrates; it often hauls the ship closer with its other limbs. Most pseudopods are one to three feet thick, so severing one takes a sword of sharpness or a vorpal blade, and none stops working until the whole creature dies.

Piercing weapons do nothing, slashing half and bludgeoning full. Fire does double damage and cold none. It is immune to poison, disease and all acid. Its false hull works like the genuine vessel it copies, with the same hull points, saving as soft metal, with SR 2 and NR D. Damage to it is figured normally and also harms the ontalak, adjusted for its plasmoid nature, so ballista bolts do nothing. Once the hull is gone, the ontalak pulls in every pseudopod, coats itself in tarry acid that burns anyone touching it for 1d12 per round, and tries to fly away.

They seldom meet except to breed. Sailors tell of a great fleet of ghost ships that gathers in deep space once each year.

Like other plasmoids they eat nearly anything digestible. A slain ontalak releases acid that destroys half its covering's hull points.