The Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther from DRAGON(R) issue #160 All talk but no brains, with a bottomless appetite to boot by Nigel D. Findley (C)1990 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. "Lykan." There are times when a single word can be more startling than a heavy-handed clap on the shoulder. Lykan is my birth name. The problem? It wasn't the name I was using at the time. I turned around toward the speaker with an inane grin and a denial on my lips. "I'm sorry, kind sir, but you must have mistaken me for . . . oh, bloody hell." (That last bit came as I saw who was accosting me.) I'm a big man--unfortunate, since it's hard to disguise size--but this guy was even bigger. The impression of size wasn't hurt by the fact that he was carrying a mace the size of a small watchtower, and by the fact that he stood a full head taller than the two fighters in plate mail who flanked him. I knew his face, of course. Who doesn't know the face of the vice prelate, second-ranking cleric in the Order of the Prelacy? I knew his name, too--Reifus, endearingly nicknamed "the Pagan Hammer" --and he obviously knew mine, which he proceeded to demonstrate a second time. "You are Lykan," he said in a growl that would make a war dog proud, "the thief." I glanced over my shoulder at my audience, which was listening with growing interest, and I gestured for him to lower his voice. "Peace, good sir," I said, playing to the gallery. "Perhaps we can clear up this . . . misunderstanding." I stepped closer to him--his bodyguards stiffened--keeping my hands in plain sight and a fawning smile on my face. "You are Lykan," he growled again. But this time his voice was pitched lower. "I have need of your services." With an effort, I kept astonishment off my face. "Well, then," I said, "perhaps we can deal." He scowled. "I talk. You obey. I let you live." Whatever happened to the fine art of negotiation? I sighed. "All right." They escorted me to the Prelacy's headquarters, the Basilica--you know the building, the only church built according to the Ancient Barbarian Fortress school of architecture--and into a reception room large enough for the prelate to receive a full battalion, should it strike his fancy. I stood while the Pagan Hammer sat on an ornate wooden throne (the throne normally reserved for the prelate). I raised an eyebrow. Reifus nodded and answered the unspoken question. "Yes. The prelate has gone to his eternal reward, as the Father wills." He made a complex gesture, but his heart wasn't in it and his presentation was desultory. Then he got down to business. "The Order of the Prelacy keeps its coffers and its treasures within this Basilica," he said--and I could hear the capital letters--"within the Vault of the Holies. You probably know that, considering your occupation." Though he said it with a sneer, I took it as a compliment to my thorough research. "Of course," I told him. "And I also know that the vault is guarded by a trap that your prelate designed himself. What of it?" Reifus raised his eyes to whatever heaven the prelate was now occupying, and he controlled himself with an effort. "Yes, the trap. That's where your skills will prove of use." I caught on then and tried not to giggle. "He didn't tell you how to disarm it, did he? How inconsiderate of him." Reifus scowled again; he was very good at scowling. "I need--the Order needs to gain access to the treasures. You will disarm the trap and open the vault." "And if I won't?" His face was like a rock. "Then I shall kill you." I sighed, having already known the answer to that question. "I need some information first. What's in the vault?" "You have no need to know," he said gruffly. "Well, did the prelate leave any notes behind--personal writings, anything like that?" "You have no need to know." Again, I sighed. "When did he set up the trap? Where had he been just beforehand? What had he been reading? Tell me anything that'll give me a clue--" He cut me off. "You have no--" "--need to know. Right." I ground my teeth in frustration. "Look, did the prelate know he was dying, and did he tell anyone--[anyone]--the secret?" The Pagan Hammer's lips made a single thin line. He stared at me in a new and uncomfortable way. "Yes, he knew he was dying, but no, he didn't tell anyone." There was a strange tone to the cleric's voice. I made a mental note not to ask in any depth [how] the prelate had met his maker. I gave up. "Okay, you win. Take me to the vault." He did. Down into the bowels of the Basilica we went, eventually stopping in front of a heavy ironbound door. Reifus dismissed the two guards who'd been dogging my steps. I watched them leave, then turned to the cleric with a nasty grin. "So you think, wearing your armor and packing your mace, you're more than a match for a sniveling, unarmed thief. Is that what you think?" "Yes," he said. I glanced him up and down a moment, then put my mind on business and looked at the door. "Is this the vault?" "The first door." "And beyond the first door?" "The second door." His dialogue was beginning to irritate me. "What if I just refuse to go any further?" "I'll kill you." "And if I try but fail?" "If the trap doesn't kill you, I will." I was as good as dead, so I quit stalling. I pulled out my thieves' kit and turned to the lock--big, clunky, old fashioned. I laugh at locks like that. I laughed at this lock now, picked it, and swung open the door. Just before I stepped through, I said to Reifus, "Shut the door behind me, but don't lock it. And don't come in, or I just might disarm the trap by letting you walk into it." His expression told me I had no worry on that score; the thought of the trap scared the religion out of him. I grabbed a lit torch from a sconce on the wall and stepped through the first door. Reifus shut the door behind me. There was a short passageway between the first and second doors. I scanned the floor for trip wires, trapped stones--the usual things. There was nothing. But when I rested my hand on the stonework beside the second door, the surface felt slightly warm. Oh-ho, I thought. I knew something about the prelate--my research was even better than Reifus thought. While he was working his way up the hierarchical ladder, the prelate had been a busy boy with his traps, setting up tricky protections for various church valuables. Like any ambitious thief checking out the prize purses in his territory, I'd read everything I could about the prelate's masterworks, and I was impressed (as much as I can be by an amateur, that is). The prelate, it seems, favored biological traps. In fact, he might have been the one who conceived that oft-imitated beauty where the trap dumps the victim into a gelatinous cube. With that in mind, I knew exactly what was on the other side of the door. I pulled a glob of soft wax out of my thieves' kit and quickly fashioned a pair of earplugs. Next, out came some gauze from my first-aid supplies (it pays to be prepared); I bound a strip across my eyes. I could still see, but dimly--which is how I wanted to see. I picked the lock--it was as easy as picking my teeth--and swung open the second door. Prepared as I was, I almost choked on the reek of ammonia and other noxious substances that wafted out.((1)) There it was, just as expected: a gibbering mouther, the prelate's biological trap, sitting in the middle of a bare room with glass-lined walls. Gods, but it was ugly in the torchlight--all eyes and mouths, like a bevy of stool pigeons. The mouther lurched its green, slimy body toward me, all its mouths working. Some were biting at the floor, pulling its nasty bulk along; others were babbling nonstop. Imagine all the inmates of an asylum talking, screaming, and mumbling all at once. The noise the mouther was making was even worse than that--or it would have been, if I could have heard it through my earplugs. At least madmen speak in voices that are human. The mouther doesn't; its din is a combination of sounds resembling human voices, animal noises, and things you would rather not think about. It's enough to unseat your reason. It's the sound of chaos incarnate--not just the voices of the insane, but the voice of insanity itself. It's the voice of every creature that makes up the mouther, each crying out its torment. I used to wonder where the mouther got all of its eyes and mouths. One day someone told me. There's a theory--and I've no reason to dispute it--that creatures absorbed by a mouther become [part] of the mouther.((2)) Their minds merge with its mind, and they exist forever, irreversibly mad, in a horrible form of living death. When I saw this mouther, I believed it all. I know a little about mouthers (it's good business to learn at least something about all the things in the world that want to eat you), but I don't know where they come from. Apparently, no one does. Some cite these hideous creatures as examples of why mages shouldn't be allowed to perform magic. Gibbering mouthers are very hard to kill. People will tell you the mouther's brain is buried somewhere in its middle, and that's why it's so hard to land a telling blow. Actually, the creature's nervous system is distributed throughout its bulk; it has no distinct organ that you can point at and call a brain. Hit a small pseudopod and you're just as likely--or unlikely--to hit brain tissue as you are when you run the beast through with a battle lance. You can't even suffocate it properly.((3)) One thing I do know about mouthers reinforces one of my pet peeves. I've got some advice for people (like the ex-prelate) who do their own traps: Don't. Use a thief to stop a thief. I could have told the prelate the problem with the gibbering mouther. Yes, it'll confuse, it'll kill, it'll eat anyone who comes in to steal your treasure. But if left alone long enough, it'll [eat ]your treasure--that is, if the treasure's not on fire. That's why I wasn't too surprised to find a bare room--once a treasure room--at the end of the passage.((4)) I didn't stop to ponder all of this then and there. I acted. Otherwise, I would have known the mouther's secrets more intimately than I really cared to. I backpedaled fast, just as the monster advanced and one of its mouths cut loose with a nasty gob of saliva. The liquid struck the wall behind me (I duck fast) and exploded impressively. I almost dropped the torch when I felt the heat and pressure from the burst on my back. Even through the gauze, the flash was impressive enough to almost blind me. Mouther spittle contains what alchemists call ammonium iodide, an unstable compound and an effective contact explosive: lots of flash, some punch, and an impressive bang. It's easy to concoct in a lab; I've used it myself on occasion. But the mouther does it naturally.((5)) I kept moving back. The mouther kept advancing. The stone floor around the monster smelled like it was baking; it was probably beginning to soften now that the creature was out of its glass-lined cell. This was just another of the mouther's tricks. Lots of people think a mouther's control over ground consistency is magical. Not really; it secretes a hellish mixture of acids, solvents, and other foul fluids that break down the integrity of stone. The heat I felt was simply the heat liberated by this chemical reaction--an exothermic reaction, an alchemist friend called it. If there's any magic, it's in the fact that the mouther can wallow in this corrosive stuff and not dissolve itself. (Incidentally, that's why the room was lined with glass. The prelate must have known something about mouthers. Glass is one of the few substances they can't digest.) The mouther let fly with another spitball--flash, bang!--but I was out of there, already at the other end of the corridor by the first door. Mouthers are nasty beggars, but they're slow. I had enough time to take off the gauze blindfold, remove the earplugs, and pocket the lot. Then I threw the torch at the mouther as it closed in. A mouth opened to catch it, and the flame went out immediately. The mouther shut up, probably startled by the pain. I opened the door just enough to slip through, then shut it calmly behind me. Reifus was anything but calm, almost hopping from foot to foot. His face was streaked with sweat. I smiled up at his face and said casually, "Piece of cake." His jaw dropped. "You did it?" I didn't dignify his question with an answer. "Everything that's in there is yours." Reifus stared hard into my eyes. But if the eyes are windows to the soul, I'd long ago learned how to close the shutters. I knew Reifus intended to kill me, but not until he'd made sure of his new-found wealth. He opened the door and stepped inside, striding down the dark hall. I remembered only at the last second to slap my hands over my ears. His scream was very, very loud, louder than the babble. I wished I'd kept the earplugs in. I won't trouble you with details on my subsequent escape. I suppose I could have told him the mouther was probably just on the other side of the door--that, I [could] have done. But then again, I figured he had no need to know. Footnotes 1. Under ideal conditions, a mouther's pungent reek can give warning of its presence up to 20' away. 2. A mouther drains blood and nutrients from its victim--hence the additional 1 hp damage per round per mouth attached. When the victim reaches zero hit points and falls into a terminal coma, the mouther flows over the body and begins to absorb it. The mouther secretes digestive juices that dissolve the victim's outer tissue. Complete dissolution takes 1d6+2 rounds for a human-size body; the body is irrecoverable after 1d3+1 rounds. The secretions have an additional effect, however: they supply the nutrients needed by the victim's brain and nervous system to keep the creature alive. The tissues making up the victim's central nervous system and its eyes are absorbed into the mouther, intact and functional. Though the nervous tissues are spread throughout the bulk of the mouther, they remain in contact through thin fibrils of mouther nervous tissue. The victim's brain, therefore, never actually dies, and its anima (its soul or spirit, as described on page 10 of the AD&D 1st Edition [Legends & Lore]) is never freed. Thus, a creature absorbed by a mouther cannot be [reincarnated] or [resurrected], and cannot be contacted through a [speak with dead] spell, since the victim is not strictly dead. It is only when the mouther is slain that the victim's anima is free to travel to the Outer or Inner plane awaiting it. Once the absorption is complete, the mouther grows new eyes to surround and utilize the victim's corneas. The victim's teeth are not affected by the enzymes since the enzymes cannot dissolve dental enamel, and these are also "pirated" for use by the mouther. Absorption by a mouther invariably causes the victim to go incurably insane. The mind of a victim known to have been absorbed by a mouther can be contacted through [ESP, telepathy], and similar spells, but with great difficulty (+6 bonus to saving throws, for spells that allow them). The mind is totally insane, however, and nothing of use can be communicated to or learned from the absorbed intelligence. In fact, there is a cumulative 25% chance per round of contact that the spell-caster performing such mind reading will become insane for 1d4+8 rounds following such contact. 3. Metabolically, the mouther is as confused as its appearance implies. Though it doesn't breathe in the traditional sense, some parts of its body require oxygen and some do not (the latter using other chemicals to respire). As a consequence, it is impossible to asphyxiate a mouther: it simply shifts to anaerobic respiration so that it no longer requires oxygen. Similarly, poisonous gases (e.g., [cloudkill]) are ineffective; the mouther shifts its metabolism to a different system that is unaffected by the poisonous gas. Injected and ingestive poisons are somewhat effective against a mouther (though the creature saves at +6), because these typically cause tissue damage in addition to their metabolic effects.) 4. A gibbering mouther eats virtually anything, whether the food is animal, vegetable, or mineral. While it prefers animal tissue (preferably still alive and kicking) and vegetable matter, the mouther can also absorb and make use of most metals and minerals. This is a consequence of its strange metabolism: Virtually anything can be incorporated into its makeup or used as a life-giving nutrient. If there is no animal or plant tissue available, a mouther can change its metabolism so as to sustain itself by absorbing other material. If they actually swallow or absorb it, mouthers can dissolve and utilize any material except dental enamel (i.e., teeth), glass, diamond, adamantite, and mithral. These materials are resistant to all of its corrosive secretions and are eventually expelled. When it is well fed, a mouther can reproduce through binary fission, much like an amoeba; one mouther becomes two smaller mouthers. The offspring are initially 2 HD but grow to full size (assuming an adequate food supply is available) in 3-6 months. Offspring have the full powers of an adult from the outset. When a mouther divides, its mouths and eyes are typically shared evenly between its offspring. When a mouther has insufficient food or must live on minerals, it does not reproduce. 5. These secretions are also highly corrosive to flesh. Touching a mouther causes 1d4 hp corrosive damage to bare flesh. Metals are unaffected unless they remain in contact with the mouther for an extended time or are absorbed. Nonmetallic weapons, armor, and other items (e.g., wooden clubs, staves, leather armor, etc.) that come in contact with a mouther for even an instant must save vs. acid or dissolve immediately and become useless. END FILE