Denzelian

Denzelian

DESCRIPTION: In the purview of natural philosophy denzelians (den-ZELL-ians) are among the weirdest natural beings to ever exist, even compared with many other aberrations. These things look like featureless, grey thin sheets of stony flesh. They only move in a slow crawl and can change shape on a whim (though they must always remain two-dimensional). The largest denzelians grow up to 10 square feet in size.

PREFERRED HABITAT: These creatures can be found throughout the Plane of Earth, where they create human-sized tunnels as they burrow through rock with their acidic secretions.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Denzelians have no society beyond their immediate family. It is through they communicate with one another through vibrations, because they do not speak or have a discernible language.

ECOLOGY: The closest thing to a denzelian I could find on the Prime material plane are placozoans—tiny marine animals composed of merely two layers of cells. Denzelians can be imagined as animental placozoans that grew to massive size. They feed on minerals, likely with the aid of symbiotic microorganisms. To digest them, they secret a powerful acid and absorb dissolved elements with their whole body. This acid is foul-smelling and obviously dangerous to living matter, which renders denzelians inedible to most predators. When threatened, a denzelian can greatly increase amounts of the acid it produces to effectively sink into stone. This is, of course, very draining for the creature. Another interesting thing about denzelian biology is their lack of excretory system. Residual minerals they cannot digest are deposited between their two cell layers as crystals. Some ancient denzelians have been reported to accumulate large diamonds inside of them. These specimens, however, are exceptional, and most denzelians contain only barely useful quartz. Those, who want to find a real gem, must look for denzelians’ eggs.

Most of the time denzelians reproduce simply by splitting in two or more new denzelians, but in unfavourable conditions they may also engage in sexual reproduction. To do this, two denzelians (any of them, as their species is not separated by sexes) briefly merge and then split again. After a few days of gestation both specimens lay a cluster of eggs that appear like beautiful multifaceted orbs of smoky quartz with milky liquid inside. When the denzelian is ready to hatch, it simply melts its way out of this shell. Certain magical methods can teleport the denzelian embryo out of an egg, leaving behind a nice hollow crystal sphere. Some entrepreneurs have tried to farm denzelians for their eggs or as mining assistants (these creatures ignore metal that can be harvested), but few of those attempts have succeeded—denzelians require a narrow set of conditions, and their lives are very slow—normally, they eat through no more than a one foot of rock in a week.

COMBAT: Usually peaceful, denzelian with defend themselves if attacked, and especially if their young are threatened. In combat, they rush at their targets, attempting to trip them and force them to fall onto the creature itself, where their acidic slime is highly damaging. They can also burrow through rock and drop onto targets from above.

Sources

FULL STATISTICS FOR: [ AD&D 2e ]

CANONICAL SOURCES: Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio [2e]

SOURCE: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt