[Index]
Numenera Destiny
Pests at best, synth eaters are an awful affliction when they swarm. The creatures can infest newly uncovered ruins, but they prefer freshly built installations or, even better, those still under construction. Resembling 9-foot (3 m) long viscid streams of black sludge with metallic teeth and dead synth eyes, synth eaters slither or burrow in pods numbering up to six. Loners can also be found infesting small outposts.
Synth eaters quickly decompose the synth they ingest, leaving behind inert pools of sludge, causing ruins to degrade even further, and scuttling the aspirations of those who seek salvage there.
Daylight or even bright light repels synth eaters, which is why wrights who've learned better know to brightly illuminate their projects.
Motive: Hungers for synth
Environment: Anywhere synth is found, whether scrap or refined
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (4 points)
Movement: Short; immediate when burrowing
Modifications: Perception as level 5 due to scent. Initiative as level 6.
Combat: Synth eaters have an incredibly powerful bite, which they use to tear off chunks of synth from debris fields, standing structures, or the casings of strange items. They can attack singly or in groups of four or more, in which case they make one attack as if they were a level 5 creature and inflict a major wound (8 points).
A group of six or more can spend a round to meld together into a single creature: a synth eater 20 feet (9 m) long with a mouth large enough to swallow a human whole. These melds are level 6 creatures that inflict 10 points of damage. Melds can also make quick work of an installation.
The digested, oily black tar left behind by synth eaters is poisonous to most living creatures. If creatures get any on themselves, they suffer 3 points of damage from the illness and bonewracking nausea that follows.
Interaction: Always hungry for more synth, synth eaters understand only food source proximity and obstacles to getting what they want. However, they are bright enough to recognize a threat and adjust their tactics accordingly.
They don't seem to have emotions or feel pain like normal living creatures.
Use: The characters' emerging community is discovered by a nest of slithering synth eaters.
GM Intrusion: The PC is particularly sensitive to a synth eater's poisonous waste product. A PC affected by the poison who fails a Might defense roll after their first tenhour rest moves one step down the damage track.