Silent Death
| Statistic | Value |
|---|---|
| Climate/Terrain | Tropical |
| Frequency | Rare |
| Organization | Solitary |
| Activity Cycle | Constant |
| Diet | Carnivore |
| Intelligence | Animal (5-7) |
| Treasure | Unique, as fits the area |
| Alignment | Neutral |
| No. of Appearing | 1 per target |
| Armor Class | 0 (last 25% of hits -10) |
| Move | 0 |
| Hit Dice | 20+ |
| THAC0 | 10 (treat all armor as AC:10) |
| No. of Attacks | 1 |
| Damage/Attack | 0 (special) |
| Special Attacks | Drowning, Paralyzation, ESP, Slight charm, and illusions |
| Special Defenses | Camouflage, Feign death, and Immunity to fire |
| Magic Resistance | Nil |
| Size | H-G (12'-25') |
| Moral | Unreliable (2-4) |
| XP Value | 15,000 |
Description
Silent death is an intelligent piece of swamp that can change appearance and inner structure to either cause a creature to fall fast to its death, or permit passing over without falling through. It's hard to see, hard to recognize, and hard to re-locate.
Combat
A silent death only attacks when it feels doing so is safe. It can lure animals by emitting a smell that the target finds pleasant, or create an illusion of something that the target would like (generally, food.) It can use its ESP ability to detect close-by animal life to it, as well as sensing the tremors of foot steps. With hunger, it gets more aggressive, attacking even numerous targets, even when they are not all within attack range; with size, it gets more intelligent. People are a favorite target. A general attack starts with paralytic venom to target's foot or paws so as to stop it from fighting back and crying for aid. After that, success causes the target to disappear, falling into the silent death, failure may stop the attack unless the victim detects it. Armor one might not.
Habitat
Solitary, thinking food-oriented. However, with size its powers increase, permitting communication with others of its kind. Also, the scope of interests widens with intelligence, and one may converse with other races, too.
Ecology
As rare, it imbalances little. It's fruit and flowers, the only sure way to detect one, are food to local animal life.
There are multiple dungeon variations.