Mkodos (3.5e Monster)



''A crimson blob of jelly crawls towards you, reaching out to swallow you. It coats your entire body like a second skin as you realize in horror that it is puppeteering your body towards its doom.''

The red slime known as the mkodos is an alien ooze with a symbiotic relationship with another creature, a plant called a ya-te-veo. The ya-te-veo feeds on thermal energy and various chemicals to survive but often cannot find enough, while the mkodos releases copious amounts of heat during its digestive process and all the right chemical compounds in its waste, but is sensitive to sunlight and prey to several forms of creatures.

To survive, the mkodos takes up residence inside the belly of the ya-te-veo, where it digests in peace away from the harsh glare of the sun, while the ya-te-veo spits the mkodos out for defense and to feed, benefiting from the digestive processes of the ooze. Together, they form a dangerous predator indeed.

Combat
Living comfortably in the stomach of the ya-te-veo, when released it immediately seeks out the nearest organic creature an attempts to engulf it. It will wrap it's form around the creature's body, grappling it until its poison leaves the subject too weak to resist. At this point it usually immediately allows itself to be swallowed again, but in event that it remains on the battlefield it uses the prey's own body to continue fighting any allies who would otherwise try to save them.

Engulfing Puppet (Ex): A mkodos attempts to grapple it's opponent with its improved grab ability and strike them with its contact poison. While grappling it envelops the opponent completely, making it hard to not strike the ooze and the victim at the same time. In essence they force a shield other effect on their opponent. However, the property is much more insideous once the victim becomes helpless. They animate the body inside of them, usually walking it within devouring range of the ya-te-veo. However they can also use the body to attack.

Using the body in this way, the mkodos has the metal scores of the mkodos and the physical ability scores of either the mkodos or the victim, whichever is better. They fight mindlessly with the tools that they have, benefiting from proficiency but from no other feats such as weapon focus, nor may they cast any spells or perform any activities that involve anything the ooze could not handle on its own. It continues to fight even if the subject inside is slain.

Heat Aura (Ex): While grappling and later when engulfed, digestion begins, producing vast amounts of heat. Those within 10 ft. of a mkodos grappling or successfully engulfed around a victim take 1d10 fire damage each round.

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, a mkodos must hit with a slam attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. While grappling the mkodos deals 1d6+3 acid damage plus poison, and an additional 1d10 fire damage as digestion begins.

Poison (Ex): Any creature the mkodos hits with its slam attack, grapples and engulfs, or whenever it is struck by natural weapons or unarmed attacks are subject to the contact poison it secretes from its body. It deals 1d6 Dex/1d6 Dex damage with a DC 16 Fortitude save to negate. The save DC is constitution based.

Light Weakness: The mkodos hates the sunlight, as it causes mutation and kills its cells easily. While it can survive in the sun for short periods of time it takes 1 point of constitution damage for every hour it is exposed to sunlight. Because of this, it also reacts negatively to Light spells, taking additional damage as noted as if it were undead.

Variable Build (Ex): Due to its extreme flexibility, a mkodos can choose to count as either one size smaller or one size larger than its actual size whenever beneficial. For example, it benefits from the small size attack bonus, while gaining the +4 to grapple checks as if it were large size. It is also by this property that so many mkodos fit comfortably inside of a ya-te-veo without adding to the amount of creatures the ya-te-veo can swallow.