| Notes |
*eye-sized*
Small specimens of its secondary form cooperate to swarm larger prey, using their chromatophoric skin to camouflage themselves and lay ambush. The first attack uses their tentacles to grip onto the Hit Location struck, after which they hold on and begin to burrow into the victim’s body (the eyeball segmenting open into a threefold set of jaws). The organism uses the Sunder special effect if its prey possesses a carapace or armour.
Camouflaged, Gnaw, Incendiary, Shrieker
**Camouflaged**: Organism is adept at hiding due to its colouration or unusual surface texture. Those attempting to spot the creature suffer a penalty to Perception of two difficulty grades; or only one difficulty grade if using the IR sensors mounted on Marine vacc suits. When not hiding, the creatures send warnings by using their polychromatic skins to broadcast hypnotically pulsating patterns.
**Gnaw**: The creature is adept at chewing itself into the body of a victim it has gripped using its tentacles. This allows the creature to spend an Action Point on its Turn to automatically roll damage without needing an attack roll, whilst also permitting it to ignore any negative Damage Modifier it might normally possess. Rolled damage is first applied to any protection worn, permanently reducing its Armour Points until they reach zero, then continuing against the flesh underneath. The victim cannot parry or evade the attack - only try to pull it free on their turn.
**Incendiary**: If the organism is damaged its greenish-yellow blood immediately bursts into flame igniting an Intensity 3 Fire (Mythras Imperative p29) on whatever it was touching, which lasts for three rounds even in non-oxygen atmospheres. Although the creature itself does not catch fire, it will be consumed by the released heat unless it can scuttle clear. The blood chemistry is so highly oxidising it burns through any substance in a corrosive manner (eating away Armour Points), even explode on contact with water. If the blood emerges in temperatures above 11.75C it boils, reacting with moisture in the air to create acid—which causes a further 1d3 acidic damage to everything within a 3m range. Vacuum or rapid decompression disperses the incendiary blood, preventing any damage after the first round.
**Shrieker**: Creature sends out paralysing bursts of electromagnetic radiation in the MHz to GHz wavelengths when it attacks a victim. Unfortunately for lifeform SIRb013e, this has no effect on humans, but it does disrupt their suit microwave comms, flooding the airwaves with disturbing static screeches. Anyone ambushed by the creatures is cut off electronically, both audio and visual, until the alien or their victim is dead. |
Encounter Generator
