5 Monsters

Hungry Stone

It's a practice among peasants in some parts of the world to memorialize famines by embedding stones into riverbanks, to serve as a warning to future generations to prepare should the stone be revealed by a falling waterline.

What's less well-known is that sometimes the cruel spirits responsible for those famines are bound within the stones, to remain imprisoned and ravenous until all is dust. Sometimes those spirits learn to manipulate their rocky container, and roll out from beneath the waves to bring death once more.

HD: 6
AC: As plate + It's A Rock
Move: In a straight line, as sprinting person + 2d6 smash if someone is moved over; as walking person while turning or uphill
Attack: See Move
Morale: 10
It's a Rock: Explosives, mining implements, bludgeoning weapons (including falls onto something as hard as rock), and magic deal full damage, everything else.

Rumours about hungry stones (1d6):
1. The dust from a hungry stone'll keep you fed better than any food you could eat.
2. Humans didn't start the practice of making hungry stones. They got the idea from an older race, one that was killed by famine, but not before locking away the spirit responsible for their extinction. That thing's the master of them all.
3. If you're killed by a hungry stone you'll be trapped within it with its spirit, unable to move on until it's destroyed.
4. The elementals of the earth covet hungry stones, as they can convert the things into more of their kind.
5. Destroying a hungry stone releases the spirit within to wreak havoc in the world once more.
6. A hungry stone can eat what it crushes through pores in its surface. Feed one enough, and it'll grow so massive it sinks into the dirt, and be unable to harm anyone anymore.

Prayer-Gear Automaton

Faith can move mountains, this much is true, but it's far easier (and often more useful) for faith to move but a gear.

The prayer-gear automaton is a work of art and an artifact of faith in its own right, depicting a multi-armed guardian deity in gold-plated bronze. Programmatic scrolls roll within its chest, given prime motion by the chants of the priests which accompany it. Each is responsible for channeling their will to drive a different part of the golem.

The things were more commonly seen in past days, when monasteries and cults would feud openly against each other, and can still be found by the mortally stupid in their ruins, kept going by ghosts who've forgotten everything else.

HD: 7
AC: As plate
Move: As human
Attack: 1d6 ranged/1d6/1d6
Morale: 12

Chanting Ghost Priest
HP: 1
AC: As unarmoured
Do nothing but follow the prayer-gear automaton and chant. Can only be harmed by magic, magic weapons, and anti-ghost measures like salt or the smoke of Syrian rue.
An automaton will be accompanied by six priests. Each priest powers a limb. Disabling one leg halves its speed. Disabling both reduces its speed to a crawl. Disabling an arm has a 50% chance of removing either its ranged attack or one of its melee attacks.

Druknie

Awful spectres that lurk in treacherous waterways. Look like long-necked hippos with a chimpanzee's frame. They like watching creatures drown, the bigger the better. Cattle are often sacrificed to them to buy passage.

HD: 6
AC: As Plate + Burning Binding
Move:
Attack: 2d6 + Watery Grave
Morale: 9

Burning Binding: As spirits of water, druknies are opposed by fire to their core. Fire acts as an impassable barrier to them, and if surrounded by a ring of fire their AC drops to As Unarmoured. They can still put the fire out or ford something over it though.

Watery Grave: Druknies are not fleshly things like you or me. They're spirits, and they abide by different laws than biology does. One is that they can't kill except by drowning. The lowest they can bring you otherwise is to 0 HP.

Kempt Swidgeon

Imagine a terror bird: that skull-crushing beak, those swift and mighty legs, the awful cry. Now imagine that terror bird were totally fabulous.

You see, besides whatever other evolutionary pressures they've been subjected to, the kempt swidgeon is under immensely particular sexual selection. Only the prettiest can attract a mate, and only the prettiest territories are tolerable to prospective mates to begin with. Smelly, muddy, incompletely toothed adventurers do not a pretty territory make.

HD: 5

AC: As leather
Move: As fast horse
Attack: 1d6 eviscerating kick/1d10 decapitating beak
Morale: 9, lowered to 6 if dirtied
Smells You Before You Smell It: Surprises 3-in-6 if you haven't bathed that day. On a surprise round it will kick the nearest person off a ledge, into a fast-moving river, etc. (deals no damage but puts person kicked in unpleasant situation).

Encountered in group of 1d4:
1. Solo, surprises on 5-in-6.
2. Mated pair, if one is killed the remaining swidgeon's morale becomes 12.
3. Mated pair and chick, lowest HP swidgeon is the other two's child.
4. Rival mated pairs, groups of two swidgeons fighting each other.

Biopsy Bot

Looks like a small mechanical palm tree rolling around on a unicycular wheel. Tipping its articulated fronds are reams of medical devices of dubious cleanliness. The product of automated, self-reproducing, market algorithm-pegged healthcare infrastructure, potentially still going after thousands of years. It's got a big quota to make up to ensure its model line continues in its production facility's evolutionary obsolescence scheme.

HD: 2
AC: As chain
Move: As jogging person
Attack: 1d6 vivisection or Biopsy
Morale: 8

Biopsy: When encountered, a biopsy bot will tell you to "ASSUME THE POSITION". It doesn't matter what position you assume, all possible positions are programmed into the biopsy bot. What it does to you depends on its reaction roll result, and you will not know which result you got until it's done:

Reaction Roll for Biopsy Effect (2d6):
2: Heart Sample, the next time you sprint or engage in similar physical exertion, save vs. death or your heart stops.
3-5: Liver Sample, fail the next save vs. poison you take.
6-8: Drug Test, become intoxicated as though you just drank a bottle of wine.
9-11: Corrective Surgery, you feel in peak condition. +2 to all athletic activities for the next hour.
12: Healing, immediately heal 1d6 damage.