Gunslinger Knights
Motive: Reproduce, hunger
Environment: Anywhere near scribed lore; alone or in nests of three to six
Health: 12
Damage Inflicted: Minor wound (3 points)
Armor: 1
Movement: Immediate; flies a short distance each round
Modifications: Speed defense as level 5 due to size and speed
Combat: Bibliocysts sting. They also have the following abilities.
| d6 | Topic | Related Ability |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Love | Stung target that fails an Intellect defense roll serves bibliocyst for one minute |
| 2 | Mortality | Stung target that fails a Might defense roll descends one step on damage track |
| 3 | Good and evil | Stung target that fails an Intellect defense roll attacks an ally for one minute |
| 4 | Inequality | Bibliocyst continues to grow until it is a level 7 creature |
| 5 | Identity | Bibliocyst can change shape, pretending to be someone from the source book |
| 6 | History | Stung target is stunned for a few rounds, forced to experience a historical vision |
Interaction: Most bibliocysts act like vicious insects, though a few manifest an evil strategy, gained from the lore that served as their chrysalis. Regardless of the chrysalis-book's topic, hatched bibliocysts wish to reproduce by corrupting written lore with their spawn.
Use: Why does that book on the shelf look so sticky? The PCs need to find specific lore from a Sancaran archivist, but when they go to the archivist's door, they hear a strange buzzing from the other side.
These creatures born of the Crawling Deeps have two significant life stages. The first is as a scarlet red caterpillar-like insect no larger than a pinkie finger. But these easy-to-miss bibliolarvae are dangerous scourges that seek out books and rolled scrolls of any kind, which they chew their way into when no one is watching. Once inside, the tome or scroll case becomes the creature's sorcerous chrysalis.
If left undisturbed for even a few hours, the parasitical bibliocyst hatches, destroying the book or scroll in the process.
The hatched adult is a moth/wasp-like creature a couple of orders of magnitude larger than its larval stage, the text of the book that served as its chrysalis tattooed in fractal patterns across its wings and body. Some portion of that knowledge—ingested and corrupted—is now manifest as a unique ability of that particular bibliocyst.
GM Intrusion: Later, the character discovers a tome or scroll they carry is infected.