Peltast

A peltast is a shapeless lump about as big as three human fists, with mottled brown skin like worn, sturdy leather. In two rounds it can reshape itself into a perfect copy of any leather item, and when it notices something leather dropped, it hurries over to take its place. It feels and weighs like real leather, does not breathe, gives off no warmth or sound, smells nothing like a tannery, and radiates no magic. Its skin senses vibration and scent keenly, and countless tiny hidden eyes give it 60-foot infravision.

Pressed against suitable flesh, it oozes a numbing agent and tissue softener, dissolves a small, hidden patch of skin, and draws 1 hit point of blood-borne nourishment per day. Only 1% of hosts notice the attack, and a healthy one may never feel the slight weakness. Pulling it off leaves no peeling, tearing or bleeding.

Hardy and resilient, it shrugs off poison and bludgeoning, though edged weapons hurt it normally, and it saves vs. fire at +1.

Peltasts infest dungeons and turn up in towns, especially where sewers or tunnels connect to the depths below, usually in the guise of discarded coin pouches, gloves, hats or belts.

Humans and goblinkind are its preferred hosts; elves and dwarves do not suit it and serve only to carry it to better ones. Though it abandons a sick host, it keeps a healthy one alive: it neutralizes poisons in the host's body, extends its modest magic resistance to the host, and if the host drops to 2 hit points or fewer, it pumps back 1d4+2 hit points, once per day.

Submerged in water, a peltast releases wastes that discolor and taint it. Drinkers need a +2 save vs. poison or spend 2d4 rounds too sick to fight or protect themselves. Peltasts sense one another within 40 feet, never fight each other, and never willingly join an occupied host.

Scarcer and more dangerous, these resemble clear rock crystal rather than leather. Fist-sized and hard, they can shift their inner color and shape, and long ages of practice have taught them to mimic cut gems so precisely that they hide among real ones deep underground, rarely appearing in cities. Exceptionally intelligent, they show no organs, but swallowed blood shows inside them, and they swell noticeably once they take in over 3 hit points of nourishment. One can drink as many as 12, half of which it adds to its own hit points for a day, so it prefers sleeping, dead or helpless victims and uses magic to arrange more.

Each round it may silently employ one ability: call monsters, as monster summoning VI except that the summoned beasts are hostile and set upon its carrier until feeding conditions improve; a strong suggestion (-1 to saves) urging summoned monsters and nearby beings toward maximum bloodshed, while leaving it some living host; or slow on anyone touching or carrying it. Otherwise it feeds on hosts and grants benefits exactly as a lesser peltast does.