I imagined any creature crawling through a tunnel would be slow, but not this one.
Pincers first, then its triple-toothed mouth, one pair of red eyes, then another, then a third.
~Deni Facca, “The Sound of a Beast”
Slicer beetles shed their tough carapaces three times during their lives. In the first two stages, these creatures look like well-armored, six-eyed beetles with front piercers designed to slice through flesh, bone, and most types of armor. They grow to nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) high in their second stage.
Although no one alive has claimed to see one, it is believed that in their final stage, the creatures morph one more time into savage burrowbeasts that spend the remainder of their short lives
underground, protecting a giant nest made from their sloughed-off intestines and other internal organs. Called wizens by those who study the creatures and “suredeaths” by everyone else, these creatures are said to be fierce opponents and fight to the death (yours, not theirs) in the defense of their young. Motive: Hungers for flesh, defense of young
Environment: Wooded areas, underground tunnels, softrock caves Health: 15
Damage Inflicted: 5 (young), 7 (adults), or 10 points (wizens) Armor: 3 (young), 4 (adults), or 6 (wizens)
Movement: Short
Combat: Slicer beetles are the kings of piercing and tearing, using their pointed front legs to stab through and rip into flesh, bone, and armor. Young slicer beetles deal 5 points of damage, adults deal 7 points of damage, and wizens deal 10 points of damage.
Additionally, each time that a slicer beetle successfully attacks, the victim must make a level 5 Speed defense roll or his armor is torn apart and destroyed.
Interaction: Slicer beetles cannot be communicated with.
Use: While exploring an ancient mine, the PCs hear the sounds of skittering and the rough scratch of carapace against rock. It isn’t long before they realize they’ve happened upon a slicer beetle or two.
While no one living can rightfully claim to have seen a wizen, occasionally someone runs across a hastily scrawled depiction of just such a creature on a cave wall or in a tunnel deep below the earth. Such depictions are usually unfinished.
GM Intrusion: While the
PCs fight a pair of young slicer beetles, a wizen rises up out of the ground beneath the characters and attacks.
SLIDIKIN
5 (15)
Skulking from shadow to shadow, the slidikin dwell on the fringes of human society. They are bizarre creatures, their origins a complete mystery. While one might pass as a human from a distance, their chalk-white skin, lack of eyes or nose, and far-too-many mouths ensure that a close examination would prove them otherwise. In people’s rare, brief, furtive, and frankly disturbing interactions with slidikin, they have made passing references to “the hideous game.” This seems to be an incongruous competition among slidikin (and only slidikin) that involves dark deeds—theft, kidnapping, mutilation, and murder. (It likely involves other things as well, but no one knows what they are, focusing only on those activities that affect humanity.)
Motive: The game
Environment: Human villages and towns Health: 22
Damage Inflicted: 5 points Movement: Long
Modifications: Speed defense and stealth as level 6
Combat: Slidikin are likely to use weapons in combat, although they never wear armor, preferring to remain agile rather than encumbered.
Interaction: Talking with a slidikin can be infuriating. No matter what the situation, the slidikin, with its multiple, grating, whispered voices, speaks with outlandish contempt for whomever it encounters, as if it knows a great many things that everyone else
does not. It finds odd things (like physical threats) humorous, and many normal concepts (like justice or revenge) incomprehensible. It never tells anyone the nature of the game or anything of its own nature. Use: A man stumbles out of a dark alleyway toward
the PCs, blood running down his face. “The mouths,” he whispers hoarsely. “The mouths.” If the characters examine him, they see that his eyelids have been sliced off. He says that men—at least, he thought they were men at first—grabbed him the day before and held him in a dank cellar overnight, bound and gagged. They giggled and whispered among themselves the whole time. Then they mutilated him with knives and left him in the alley. He gives a frantic, fevered description of a slidikin.
Loot: A slidikin very likely carries 1d100 shins and a cypher as well as a variety of knives and some poisons, knockout drugs, lockpicks, and other tools.
Slidikin hate memora (page 83) and vice versa, but no one knows why. Slidikin also appear to be terrified of philethis (Numenera corebook, page 252).
GM Intrusion: The
slidikin runs away and around a corner. If the character follows it, the creature is gone. Is there a secret door? Did it disappear into the shadows? Did it climb up to the roof? It’s nowhere to be seen.
SLURGE
2 (6)
Slurgen glide across the landscape as easily and quickly as birds soar overhead, leaving trails of evaporating slime. A slurge eats plants, garbage, dead creatures, and even some types of synth and metals—anything that doesn’t fight back when the slurge slides onto it and discharges eating mucus. Motive: Hungers for vegetation, carrion, garbage
Environment: Dry wastes, forested hills, temperate lowlands, and outside the walls of large cities in pods of six to eight
Health: 6
Damage Inflicted: 3 points Armor: 4
Movement: Short
Modifications: Speed defense as level 1 due to size and quickness
Combat: A slurge can spit a glob of eating mucus at one foe within short range as its attack (or settle down atop an unresisting foe or piece of food and inflict damage every round automatically that ignores Armor). The eating mucus acts like acid, and a slurge can adjust the acid variety depending on the material it’s attempting to eat or damage.
When danger threatens, a slurge depends more on its defense. Its shell provides the first line of protection, but a slurge also produces defensive slime when threatened, which oozes across the ground within immediate range of the slurge. The slime is amazingly sticky, and any creature (other than a slurge) standing in the area must make a Might defense roll on its turn; failure means the creature is stuck in the slime and can’t move. While this doesn’t stop creatures from attacking, it prevents them from following a retreating slurge.
The third kind of mucus a slurge can discharge is for transport. This incredibly slippery slime allows a slurge to glide like a skater on ice wherever it goes. However, the material isn’t stable; it evaporates within a minute of being produced.
Interaction: Slurgen are scavengers and, in most cases, are easily frightened off by vigorous movement. On the other hand, slurgen pods have been known to attack travelers, especially those who are alone or in small groups.
Use: Slurgen are considered a delicacy once de-shelled, boiled, and fried in herb butter. But de-shelling is the trick because slurge shells are amazingly strong and hard to penetrate. In fact, armor made from the shells is highly prized for its strength and its light weight compared to metal.
Slurge and broken hound populations overlap in a few areas but rarely come into conflict. Whereas broken hounds are hunters, slurgen are scavengers. Anything broken hounds leave behind, slurgen suck up. And broken hounds learn that getting through slurgen shells is often not worth the trouble, especially in the face of a slurge’s defense and eating mucus.
GM Intrusion: A PC steps
onto a slurge transport trail that hasn’t yet evaporated and, due to the sloping ground, slides out of short range before her turn. This might put her out of a fight for a round, move her into dangerous terrain, or slide her off a long drop.
SIZE COMPARISON
Broken hounds, page 232
SPURN
3 (9)
From afar, a gang of spurn seems like nothing more than humanoids in oily rags. But up close, they’re revealed as creatures formed of smashed machines, shattered synth, matted hair, drippy sludge, and garbage. Spurn are self-organizing collections of refuse that evolved among the landfills and dumps of previous civilizations over deep time. Geological evolution makes primeval landfills difficult to recognize for creatures other than spurn.
Spurn are intelligent and highly territorial, especially against rival spurn groups, and they savagely defend their kingdoms of trash in the face of threats both imagined and actual.
Motive: Territory, defense, knowledge of undiscovered garbage dumps
Environment: Ninth World garbage dumps and landfills of ancient epochs. A raiding spurn gang typically includes three to five members.
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: 4 points Armor: 1
Movement: Immediate; long if a spurn chooses to discarnate in one location and reassemble a new body from trash in another location (see Combat).
Combat: Spurn can spontaneously reform a limb to extrude splintered glass, sharpened synth, or a heavy, macelike mass, depending on the apparent vulnerability of their foe.
When its turn begins, a spurn can choose to fall apart and instantaneously reassemble a new body anywhere within long range that contains sufficient trash. A spurn loses 1 point of health each time it travels in this fashion. When it appears behind a foe and attacks as part of the same action,
the foe’s Speed defense roll against that attack is increased in difficulty by one step.
A spurn that has a functioning cypher may spend its action absorbing the item into its body and gain 1d6 points of health. A wounded spurn might try grabbing a cypher from a character.
Spurn communities are often directed by a leader (level 5) who is larger and tougher than the regular rubbish. The leader rarely stirs from its buried landfill lair, but if encountered, a spurn leader is a hulking, 8-foot (2.4 m) tall creature with 20 points of health and 3 points of Armor. In combat, the leader makes two attacks on its action, each of which inflicts 5 points of damage.
Interaction: Spurn communicate with one another via machine telepathy. A few can speak with non- spurn by adapting their components to produce sounds with the correct cadence and frequency to mimic a known language. Despite their territorial instinct, spurn may treat visitors peacefully if a novel numenera gift (even one that is apparently broken or used up) is offered.
Use: Traveling PCs pass over or through an ancient landfill that is claimed by one or more spurn gangs, called refuses. The characters may initially see a gang war from afar, then later be menaced by one of the groups. While one refuse may be willing to trade, another is just as likely to attack first and rifle through possessions later.
Loot: Many spurn are animate accumulations of useless dross, but one in four spurn contains 1d6 functioning cyphers.
GM Intrusion: A
destroyed spurn spontaneously reassembles, becoming a fully healthy specimen in the round following its supposed obliteration. SIZE COMPARISON
CREATURES: SPURN - STELLAR WEAVER