Friday, December 30, 2011

Drab Jelly (Wermspittle)

Drab Jelly
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 30' (10')
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 9 (3 if exposed to purple fire)

Mostly translucent gelatinous patches of quivering goo, the Drab Jellies are patient, slow and opportunistic oozlings who lurk within the shadows of abandoned buildings and along the dank walls of alleys. Over time a Drab Jelly truly earns its name by leaching the color and vibrancy right out of anything that they remain in contact with for any length of time. When they attack, they not only cause acidic damage, but they fade the colors from their target, right down to their very bones, should they have bones.

The dyers and cloth-makers will buy Drab Jellies scraped into barrels lined with copper, wax or glass. A barrel filled with one large Drab Jelly or a dozen smaller ones will fetch the same price, as the buyers tend to pay by the pound. A common trick among Jelly-Catchers is to let the things gorge on artworks salvaged or liberated from boarded-up galleries or estates, especially the most colorful stuff. That will cause the Drab Jelly to bloat a bit and gain some weight, thus making it more likely to bring in a few more coins for their troubles.

There are also formulae within certain grimoires that allude to sorcerous applications of Drab Jellies in the pursuit of invisibility or in confronting Horla, Unseen Beasts, Yellow Wallpaper or even the Dread Colours. But these are highly dangerous pursuits, typically left incomplete and more often than not very likely to draw the attentions of those things one is seeking to dissuade, drive off or defeat.

Drab Jellies dislike strong light and fire, but they fear purple fire more than anything else. Jelly-catchers often use panes of purplish-stained glass in their lamps or lanterns in an attempt to fool the creatures when they do not have access to a spell or device that can produce the purple fire. The sham lamps work about 10% of the time. The purple light of the sham lamps is also highly likely to enrage Ochre Jellies, so it is not a trick to use unless one is certain which and what kind of Jelly is being dealt the consequences could be dire indeed.

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