Creature Feature: Unshaped Flesh

Unshaped Flesh CR 15

The towering creature lets out a terrible roar, its body seeming to shift into a new arrangement of claws, armor, and sensory organs even as it charges.

CE Huge aberration
Init +5; Senses darkvison 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +26

DEFENSE HP 275 RP 5

EAC 29; KAC 31
Fort +17; Ref +17; Will +15
DR 10

OFFENSE

Speed 60 ft., climb 60 ft.
Melee claws +28 (8d6+22 S)
Multiattack 3 claws +25 (6d4+22 S), bite +25 (3d8 +22 P)
Ranged spit +28 (5d8+15 A, range 60 ft.)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft. 
Offensive Abilities mutable

STATISTICS

Str +7; Dex +5; Con +9; Int +1; Wis +0; Cha +0
Skills  Athletics +26, Stealth +26, Survival +31
Languages Aklo, one common language used in the area
Other Abilities adaptation, forced evolution

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Adaptation (Ex)

Unshaped flesh are versatile creatures, gaining new abilities and discarding old ones as the need arises. An unshaped flesh has one ability from the following list. By taking one hour to reshape itself, an unshaped flesh can change which ability it has. Alternately, it can take a full-round action to mutate, but in such a situation the new ability is chosen randomly (roll 1d10 to determine):

  1. Additional Movement: It develops new appendages to gain a 30 ft. move speed of a type it does not possess.
  2. Collapse: Its skeletal and muscular structures adapt for high flexibility, allowing it to move through openings as small as 1/4 of its size without squeezing.
  3. Decentralized: It develops a new decentralized organ mesh that handles vital functions without specialization, becoming immune to critical hit damage.
  4. Energy Durability: Energy resistance 10 (choose one type of energy from acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic).
  5. Environmental Adaptation: It adapts to any environment it finds itself in. It gains a +10 bonus on Survival checks and +15 on Fortitude saving throws against natural hazards like extreme temperatures, starvation, dehydration, radiation, or toxic environments.
  6. Extended Limbs: Its body develops structures within itself to extend to deceptively long distances, gaining a 30 ft. reach.
  7. Lungless: It adapts to recycle air within itself, eschewing the need to breathe. It gains the No Breath property.
  8. Self-Repair: Its flesh gains the ability to quickly replace itself, gaining fast healing 10.
  9. Sensory Evolution: It develops additional sensory organs, gaining one of the following: blindsense (heat) 60 ft., blindsense (movement) 30 ft., blindsense (scent) 90 ft., doubled range for all its existing senses.
  10. Tertiary Mind: It develops portions of the neural components needed for true telepathy, gaining limited telepathy 30 ft

Forced Evolution (Ex)

Though they typically mutate at random or over a longer period, unshaped flesh can force additional mutations in extreme situations. As a standard action, an unshaped flesh can spend one resolve point to gain an additional option from the abilities listed under the adaptation ability for one hour. It cannot take the same ability multiple times at once to stack bonuses, though it may take the same ability multiple times for different effects. For example, it could not take Extended Limbs twice for a 60 ft. reach or energy durability twice for fire resistance 20, but it could take energy durability twice for fire resistance 10 and cold resistance 10. When this ability expires, the unshaped flesh takes 5d6 damage and 1d4 Constitution damage as the exertion on its body sets in. This damage lasts for 24 hours and can only be healed before that time using magic.

Mutable (Ex)

As a full-round action, an unshaped flesh can undergo one of the following changes. These changes are permanent until the unshaped flesh decides to change them again.

  • The damage type of its claws (slashing as presented in the default stat block) changes to slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.
  • The damage type of its spit (acid as presented in the default stat block) changes to acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic.
  • Its additional movement speed (climb as presented in the default stat block) changes to burrow, climb, fly, or swim with the same speed.

ECOLOGY

Environment any
Organization single, spawn (3-10)

Most creatures can be traced back to a point of origin, using records of spaceflight and examinations of various biomes to determine where something could have spread from. This is not true of the creatures known as unshaped flesh. Constantly mutating and changing, attempting to determine where these creatures came from is an exercise in futility as they defy any attempt to draw connections to other forms of life.

Though their name implies a lack of fixed form, such an implication is actually incorrect. The appearance of an unshaped flesh tends to be relatively fixed when you look at them, though what that appearance is can vary wildly between individuals. However, though their appearance is generally static they can drastically mutate their physiologies over time as the situation demands it. Such changes can vary from simply cosmetic alterations to entire overhauls of their bones, muscles, organs, and skin. On more than one occasion, a researcher has tagged what they thought to be a new creature only to track it down later and find the tag in a far different environment form where it was first placed in a creature that looks nothing like what they saw.

Unshaped can wildly vary in what they look like. Documented and confirmed examples have looked like anything from heavily shelled reptiles with no eyes to tentacled bats with multiple heads to spindly creatures on an odd number of legs. Despite this difference in appearance, unshaped are nearly identical on a genetic level, raising many questions about how their bizarre anatomies come about. On the other hand of this similarity, convergent evolution is paradoxically common and rare. This comes about as unshaped adapt to an environment in unique ways, even when responding to the same challenge. Two unshaped in a cramped space station may both develop the collapse adaptation, but where one takes the form of becoming a boneless thing of tentacles and tails, the other may develop a skeleton capable of dislocating all of its joints and moving even in such a state. Something as simple as flight can see the appearance of a dozen different forms of propulsion between a dozen different unshaped, from wings to electromagnetic impulse generation.

Despite this wide variety of forms, behavior among unshaped tends to be common. They are universally carnivorous, though they seem to have no preference in the type of prey. However, they are more cunning than one may assume them to be and many will take advantage of this to hunt sentient beings who don’t know enough about them to properly escape or counter-attack. This often leads to major problems, as unshaped have a tendency to hunt and consume even when such actions are unnecessary. Several dissections of unshaped have found their stomachs stuffed to bursting with their devoured victims, causing actual damage to the creatures in their attempts to sate their hunger. Why they’re possessed by such a need to consume is unknown, but some scholars hypothesize it’s a biological impulse either left over from an earlier stage in their evolution or setting in early from a later stage in their lifecycle. Proponents of the latter theory are often ignored, as the theory tends to go along with conspiracy theories about great ever-mutating titans from who the unshaped are descended. No evidence has ever been found of such creatures, but the fact that many exploratory missions to find such proof have gone missing leaves room for these theories to grow.



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A freelance writer for the Open Gaming website who looks forward to building plots out of monster entries for you to enjoy as a player or DM.

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