Grellican

This comes to you thanks to Reddit user timplausible from their comment on this post.

Illustration by Noble Hardesty

Grellican: Init +3; Atk Tentacle +2 melee (1d2 plus grab and stuff) or beak +0 melee (1d4 plus swallow); AC 12; HD 2d8; MV fly 40’; Act 5d20; SP grab and stuff, swallow, bill pouch, death throes; SV Fort +2, Ref +3, Will +3; AL C.

Swarming around piers of sardonyx and quays of porphyry in the Dreamlands, these creatures sometimes pass into the waking world at twilight when the borders are thin. What they consume in the Dreamlands is a mystery, but once within the waking world their appetites cannot be appeased.

A grellican is a creature similar to a grell or a grell-ba-tross, and is found along seacoasts during twilight hours and early morning, when the borders between Dream and Reality are thin. A grellican looks like a giant brown-white brain, some two feet in diameter, with birdlike wings, a pelican-like bill, and four long dangling tentacles.

Each tentacle can grab its target unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check (vs. +2), and the victim is automatically stuffed into the grellican’s bill pouch the next round unless it somehow escapes. Each tentacle has 2 hp; these do not count against the creature’s normal hit points, and a severed tentacle regenerates in 1d3 days. Blunt weapons cannot be used to sever tentacles. A victim can also use an action die to force another opposed Strength check, escaping if successful.

Likewise, if the grellican makes a successful bill attack against a target, the target much succeed in a DC 7 Reflex save or be swallowed and deposited into the grellican’s bill pouch. No matter how many creatures are stuffed into a grellican’s pouch, or how large they are, the pouch never appears larger than then of a pelican from outside.

A grellican’s bill can open to nightmarish dimensions, allowing the creature to force creatures as large as a cow into its bill pouch. The bill pouch itself is an extra-dimensional space which confines and slowly dissolves its victims at a rate of 1d3 hp per turn. A character within the bill pouch can attack it with a bladed weapon, with a -2d penalty to attack rolls and damage (AC 16), but the damage they do does not count against the grellican’s total hit points. Should they succeed in causing 8 hp damage in a single attack, a rent is created and everything in the grellican’s pouch is sucked into a dreamworld. If you backed the Painted Wastelands kickstarter and ordered the DCC Conversion Guide, this is an excellent chance to use it!

Otherwise, when a grellican is reduced to 0 hp, it begins to dissolve into dreamstuff and is fully gone in 1d6+1 rounds. One creature per round can be rescued from the grellican’s bill pouch per round while this is happening, should anyone think to do so. Those still within the bill pouch may be deposited into some distant Dreamland with a successful Luck check. The judge may allow some special quest to recover those who fail. Otherwise, they are forever lost.