The Bovine Mass

[Look, this has been set in my drafts for feckin' forever. Have a peek.]

So like, I've got this whole list of monsters I've come up with for an adventure that I may eventually ever get around to running. In the mean time, gorge your eyes on them.

The Bovine Mass

When the star fell, one of the tiny incandescent fragments landed in the Abbey's cowshed, and unfortunately, every one of the Abbey's animals was there. Now, there are no cows left, only the Mass.

It heaves and grunts when it sleeps, limbs hanging limply and gangling here there and everywhere. Its hide is covered in pustules and lesions of every colour, and its many tongues hang vacantly from its many, many mouths. Drool hangs in thick, ropey knots, and eyes roll unseeing in bloated, puffy sockets. The Mass is about the size of a small bus, about 20 cows in all went into it, and now only this hateful screaming thing remains.

Mostly it just loiters, wallowing in its unending misery. Mud cakes it, and shit. It has the colons of a couple of dozen cows just sitting there, every other day or so one bursts.

And yet the Mass continues to live, sustained by the baleful energies of the fallen star.

If disturbed, the Mass slops up on many spines like a hateful fleshy worm, limbs hanging from it like hairs or spines, and screams, loud enough to shake the pathetic timbers of its home. It has no dexterity or grace at all, it attacks only when it must, and when it attacks, it throws itself forward with no sense of self-preservation, its massive and crushing weight the only it has.

Wounds phase it very little too, its nerves long since disintegrated. Even hacked off hunks of flesh will continue to thrash about and struggle long after death unless they too are dealt sufficient punishment. Mostly they can only writhe and squeal and spray acidic vomit in gouts from weeping wounds, but even the vomit is caustic enough to be deadly for the unlucky.

The Gardener

When the star fell, a small shard of it stabbed down into the Abbey's garden, where one of the unlucky brothers was tending the vines. Now, the vines tend to him.

Take the bones of a person, wrap them all about with the thickest, lushest, greenest vines you can find, make sure they are the deep greens of the hearts of forests, and then give it the life of a dead star that it walks and lives too. 

The Gardener continues to perform the duties it conducted in life, leading the orchestra of fecundity and feral growth the fallen star has induced in the Abbey's gardens. He walks about it jerking, faltering steps, and he caresses the plants he tends with a stiff, arthritic affection. He wields no tools, only his hands and the more dexterous creepers that curl and spiral up his back like spider legs; these he uses to prune and weed with single-minded determination and endless effort. He slows down at night, but he never stops.

If disturbed, he will ignore you. If greatly disturbed, he might shove you away without turning towards you, is other limbs continuing their work as he does so. If you attack him, he will collapse into a pile of soft and rotting vegetable muck. He will then grow again, out of sight, and watch you.

When he thinks his moment has come, vines will erupt from the earth, grasping, strangling, choking. If he slays one of your number, he will slink into their flesh and wear it like a suit. For now he will only play dead. Later he may use it to ambush you, or possibly just fertilise his subjects with the softening meat.

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