Devouring Pudding
- Habitat
- Ruins, caverns, marshes, deserts, and icefields
- Biomes
- +underground, +settlement, +wetland
- Spawn
- solo, any
- Temper
- Mindlessly voracious
- Threat
- High
- Rarity
- Uncommon–Rare
- Move
- crawl.
- Special
- Highly corrosive acid burns flesh and wears down gear durability (temporarily weakening armour and weapons, never destroying or removing items); immune to acid, cold, and poison; lightning bolts and weapon blows split it into smaller puddings; fire and magic missiles do normal damage
- STR36
- DEX9
- CON32
- INT1
- Health459
- Damage121
- Armor16
A devouring pudding is a sprawling colony of living cells that creeps over floor, wall, and ceiling alike in search of anything edible. It senses warmth and the make-up of nearby matter from a distance, then flows toward prey and smothers it in corrosive slime. Marsh-dwelling kinds wear a tough dark hide; pale arctic ones masquerade as drifts of snow; sand-coloured desert ones can even digest grit when nothing better offers. Cutting or striking one only carves it into smaller, fully working puddings, so seasoned wanderers reach instead for torches and flame. In a survival game it punishes careless looting: its acid wears down the durability of a pack, a rope, or a suit of mail and leaves armour temporarily weakened, forcing players to burn it out and see to their gear afterward. It never destroys or takes what you carry.
Behavior
- Oozes across any surface, including ceilings, and drops onto prey below
- Senses heat and material from a long way off to pick its targets
- Splits into smaller copies when hacked, struck, or shocked by lightning
- Smothers victims and digests them where they fall
- Shrugs off acid, cold, and venom; only fire reliably destroys it
Abilities
- Corrosive Body. Its slime burns flesh and wears down leather, wood, and even metal on contact, sapping gear durability and briefly weakening armour rather than destroying it.
- Fission. Blows and lightning divide it into independent puddings rather than killing it.
- Surface Crawl. Climbs walls and ceilings to ambush from above.
- Elemental Immunity. Unharmed by acid, cold, and poison.
Drops & Crafting
- Caustic residue (alchemical acid for etching or tanning)
- Digestive jelly (a preservative-stripping solvent)
- Undigested coins or metal lumps recovered from its mass
- Acid sacs usable in trap-crafting