Cephalith - A Strange Creature for Fantasy Gaming

The earth hears many secrets, and even the worked stone of castles and towers whisper to their great mother. Jealous, foolish apprentices and ex-apprentices seek the wild regions where emerald lights gleam in the night, for old codices and older rangers' tales say that these regions are where those secrets bubble are spoken back to the sky. Traveling into borderlands where nonsense runes and ritual circles are carved on trees and stones, too late they find that these stories are incomplete, and are bludgeoned to death by a gang of cold, lugubrious cephaliths!

Stooping, sluggish mudmen with lumpy deformed skulls made of green crystal. Cephaliths are born headless from the earth in huge numbers around a cluster of disembodied crystal skulls, but most are killed almost instantly in the scramble to take one, or else slowly crumble back into dirt when all are claimed. The few that survive split into small bands that slouch off into the wilderness, corralled by a despotic leader with multiple heads haphazardly embedded within them.

Cephalith
HD: 2
AC: 13
Move: Walk, earthswim slightly slower than human
No. Appearing: 2d6; die that land on a 1 or 6 indicate the presence of a multicephalith with 4 HD.
Morale: 6, or 9 if led by a multicephalith
Intelligence: Dull and aphasic
Morality: Depressive, spiteful, and bullying

Pummel: +2 to-hit, 1d6+2 damage

Crystal Skull: that which sustains the cephalith's lifeforce, each one containing a single spell and 1 MD to cast it with; this is a good list to take from. Multicephaliths instead have 1d6+1 crystal skulls embedded within them. A skull can regain its expended MD with a night's worth of exposure to starlight, or by having a creature's brains smeared onto it. If a cephalith has no crystal skulls, it loses 1 max HP a day. It's possible to learn the spell a skull contains with the aid of 500gp worth of fragile optical equipment.

Siphene - A Strange Animal for Fantasy Gaming

Gemstones that gleam in sunlit shallows and disappear as quickly as they appear. Animal corpses that walk themselves to the edge of the water and toss themselves in. Ropes of translucent slime washed up on the banks. Those who know the ways of the rivers know to keep axes and cleavers close on hand when these things appear, for these are the signs of the siphene.

 

Also known as a water jelly or falser hydra, the siphene is a siphonophore which lives in fresh, running water. The creature's reproductive core, the closest thing to a central body, is an orgy of protoplasm the sized of a balled-up human, nestled deep within an underwater cave. Emerging from the mating ball are dozens upon dozens of tendrils which extend outwards and downstream, carried and distributed by the flow of the river's water. The further out from the central body, the older the individual organisms that make up the siphene get; the three fingered hands which wave on the ends are geriatric, and slough off daily to reveal a new set. Primitive eyespots and sensitive touch and taste receptors line each tendril, and down each runs a nerve cord so that whatever is sensed by one is quickly known by the whole being.

Siphene Limb
HD: 1; takes 1 damage per die from piercing and bludgeoning weapons 
AC: 14 within water, 10 without
Move: As swift fish
No. appearing: 4d6
Morale: 8
Intelligence/morality: the most basic and primitive of predators

Slap: +2 to-hit, 1d4 nonlethal damage
Grapple: multiple limbs of the siphene can act in concert to drag and drown a single creature. The siphene makes a single roll to grapple, getting +1 for each limb beyond the first.

Treasure Mimic: siphene limbs are invisible while under the water. They can flex their cell walls to refract light and appear as gold or gemstones scattered underwater. Close study quickly reveals these to be false, but also puts one within grabbing range.
Infectious: thick with castoff zooids, creatures who ingest the waters that a siphene dwells in without boiling, or who enter the water while injured or bloodied, must save vs. infection. On a failure, they take 1d6 Con damage from a persistent low fever and digestive issues until treated for disease, but also gain the ability to dowse for bodies of waters. If they die, their corpses rises as a zombie and walks to the nearest body of water to submerge itself and germinate a new clonal siphene core.

Siphene Core
HD: 8; takes 1 damage per die from piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing weapons
AC: 14 within water, 10 without
Move: Sluggish, must be pulled by limbs
No. appearing: 1
Morale: 7
Intelligence/morality: as limb

The siphene core has a minimum of 24d6 limbs (larger ones with more HD may well have more), and will retract 6d6 per round to defend itself when threatened.

Treasure Mimic: the core can turn itself into a dazzling disco ball, refracting light that hits it in all directions. Those who look at it must save vs blindness.
Infectious: as limb, except on failure it deals 3d4 Con damage due to the density of zooids in the water.