Merry Christmas Ro! I've been peeking at your blog for Christmas ideas and your Gudgeon Moon setting is delightfully strange. I haven't seen anything quite like it. One thing the weird alien beasties do vaguely recall to me, though, is Pikmin, and so eventually an idea for some kind of weird little creature popped into my head.
Creucen
When Ite, the Fourfold World first fell onto the Mound, one of the few creatures to not just survive but thrive in the wake of the disaster was the humble creucen. The creucen, which comes up to around a foot tall, resembles a fat crystalline teardrop turned on its side with two stubby legs. Their eyes under the crystal covering are warped and magnified. The only part of their bodies where soft tissue is exposed is their mouth, a narrow bright-red slit which only occasionally opens up when it feeds or reproduces.
Extremophilic even for the inhabitants of Ite, the diamond-hard body of a creucen is nearly impervious to mundane weaponry; their mouth alone is vulnerable, and even its seam in the diamond needs to be hit at the exact right angle to split it open. Likewise, magic often simply bounces off it, and reflects back onto the unfortunate caster or their friends. Their one great weakness is heat: fire and lightning denatures their organic crystal armor and cooks the soft flesh inside. When a cruecen dies, within minutes its innards leak out into the outer shell, which quickly softens and turns a fetid black.
Creucen are social creatures, and roam in great peeping bands. Creucen are hermaphroditic, and have two tongues, one which they use to feed and one which is a specialized reproductive organ. When they reproduce, two creucen will "kiss", and one will sting the inside of the other's mouth with its reproductive tongue, The black nodules which develop within after are baby creucen, who eventually enter the world before their shells have properly developed due to the narrow size needed to leave; these infants are kept collectively in a central nest and fiercely defended.
Before the Drop, creucen lived in the territories of the Gofka and Myrivada. The former adore the creatures and keep them as pets; it's not uncommon to see a Gofka with several creucen peeking out of its mouth. The myrivada, on the other hand, see them more as pests, though the beauty of their shells is coveted. There is a jealously-kept recipe for a caustic liquid which, if a freshly dead creucen is dropped into, preserves their diamond shell; and one of the legendary regalia of the great Myrivada spear-kings is a set of invincible creucen panoply.
Creucen
No. Appearing: 4d4
HD: 1-1
AC: 19, or 10 against fire and lightning
Morale: 8
Intelligence: one of the stupider kinds of bird
Morality: animal
Whip Tongue: +1 to-hit, 1d4 damage
Spells which target the creucen have a 50% chance of bouncing off and hitting a random target instead
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