The Sludge Brute

Encontros Pendrake

All know that the craft of alchemy carries dangers. An irresponsible or inattentive alchemist can melt his skin, scorch his flesh, inhale poisons, and blow himself to Urcaen. True alchemists also have skill in the arcane arts, a profession that draws further danger from jealous rivals and, if one is particularly unlucky, even the tools of the trade. Even something as simple as improper disposal of alchemical waste can create problems, sometimes of a deadly nature. I do not know the exact processes or reasons involved, but through arcane accidents alchemical sludge can sometimes take on sentience — and a desire for flesh. These causitic aberrations are thankfully rare but the ubiquity of alchemy means the threat of their creation is very real indeed. —

-Viktor Pendrake

This encounter, designed for four PCs of 6th level, can take place in any city, though the default setting is Corvis. This encounter requires the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide and the Monsternomicon, Vol. II.

Encounter Background & Setup

In this encounter, the PCs confront two sludge brutes — one significantly more powerful than the other — which have partially destroyed and then inhabited an alchemical laboratory.

The specifics of the sludge brutes’ genesis, and what drives the PCs to confront them, are up to you; some ideas include:

• A Magical Mystery: Rumor spreads though town of several mysterious heists of alchemical goods from locked, and even guarded, labs. The PCs might be hired to investigate by a victim. Their investigation comes to an abrupt end when the brute’s accidentally cause their next target to explode. The creation of the brutes might be the plans of a Khadoran saboteur or merely an accident of science.
  • Day in the Life: On their way to seek information from an alchemist contact, the PCs arrive just as an experiment goes wrong, resulting in the creation of two sludge brutes. They must defeat the brutes to save their associate, who is trapped in the lab with the deadly living sludge.
  • The Benefits of Science: When a pair of spying gobbers from a competing ’jack factory are chased from Engines East, a deadly chemical accident creates two sludge brutes who consume the gobbers. Now the Rhulic owner, Gamack Redhammer, seeks someone to hunt down the marauding creatures and try to find out who initially sent the spies.

The PCs track the creatures down just as they assault one of Engine East’s alchemic suppliers.

No matter which background you use, the sludge brutes knocked over a volatile mixture in the lab, causing a massive explosion that partially collapsed the building. The PCs arrive just as this happens.

It is important to give the PCs a clear motivation for why they must enter the lab. If they are hired to destroy the creatures, make it clear that their prey is likely to escape via the sewer drains if the PCs don’t confront them. If they are saving an associate, make it clear they have to act immediately to reach him or her ahead of either the fire or the brutes.

The Alchemy Lab aka The Smelly Deathtrap

In any case, the large workshop occupies the front portion of the building. Before the recent catastrophe, the lab boasted several large picture windows, allowing the alchemists and assistants to look out the front of the building onto the street. The explosion blew out the windows and partially collapsed the wooden awning. The front wall has slumped, cracking and falling in places, making the easiest entrance to the lab through a single smashed but unblocked window rather than through the heavy and jammed front door. Other entrances may also be possible (such as the stairs leading upstairs shown on the northeast corner of the map) if you like.

Conditions

Lighting

The smoke and chemical fumes make the interior dim and shadowy in most places. The sludge brutes Blindsense lets them ignore any penalties for low light.

Floors

The rubble and glass on marked portions of the floors makes for difficult terrain: every square of movement counts as two, and running and charging are impossible. For this encounter, the sludge brutes do not suffer movement penalties for moving in the difficult terrain of the floor due to their Oozelike ability.

Move Silently checks take a –8 circumstance penalty in the lab, as characters find it difficult to avoid crunching glass and kicking bottles; conversely, the over-turned tables and fallen ceiling beams provide cover throughout the building. The GM should mark several places on the map where either Low Obstacles (like over-turned benches and tables) and normal cover is available. Cover provides +4 AC and +2 to Reflex saves from some attacks and effects.

Collapsed Areas and Tunnels

Some areas are nearly filled with collapsed portions of the building but have “tunnels” though. While navigating these narrow, half a square wide passages (perhaps to rescue someone trapped or recover an item) they suffer -4 to attack rolls and AC, and suffer all the normal rules for squeezing though narrow areas.

Because of their Shapeable ability, sludge brutes never suffer any penalties for squeezing, but do gain improved cover while in these areas. Furthermore, the sludge brutes may easily move though the “walls” of these areas by using their Shapeable ability. Lastly, sludge brutes may shape themselves as a free action to completely fill an area making it impossible to pass through even with a tumble roll.

Fumes

Hazy fumes of various spilled chemicals permeate the building, providing concealment to everyone in the building (20% miss chance on all attacks) until they disperse after 10 minutes. A strong wind, such as the gust of wind spell, removes all the fumes and haze in a single round.

The GM should designate three or four different 15x15 foot areas where particular fumes are densest. Living creatures who breathe fumes (and fail a Fortitude or Will save if applicable) will suffer an effect of the GM’s choosing.

• The character suffers with all the effects of the hideous laughter spell for 1d4 rounds. Fortitude save (DC 15) to avoid.
• The character feels strangely fortified, gaining a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and saving throws for 1d4 rounds.
• The character sees black and bright spots, becoming dazzled. He suffers a –1 penalty on attack rolls, Search checks, and Spot checks for 1d4 rounds. Fortitude save (DC 20) to avoid.
• The character falls unconscious for 1 minute with all the effects of a sleep spell. Will save (DC 18) to avoid.

Read Aloud
This is the building’s main room. It was once a large workshop, but is now a disaster area. The workbenches and tables are flipped or smashed, their contents scattered or splashed all over the floor. Shards of glass lie an inch deep in places, and dark liquids stain the wooden floorboards. Circular charred areas mark where explosives must have gone off. Large cabinets, chairs, and stools lie about, most with pieces missing or skewed. The front of the room facing the street has completely collapsed. It looks like an enormous explosion took out the support pillars on the outside porch and brought down most of the wall.

Despite the destruction, plenty of intact alchemical items remain. It looks like the explosion occurred in the midst of a large series of experiments: beakers and test tubes, holding liquid of various colors and consistencies, stand about. Many of these beakers bubble and froth, some doing so with no obvious heat source. Smoke pouring from these choke the ceiling and mixes into a brownish haze that pervades the room. Odd hints of color tint the haze, and it smells of burnt syrup.

The remains of people lie among the laboratory experiments and detritus. Two, one human and one gobber, are in plain view, but that’s unfortunate, considering their states. Much of their skin, flesh, and bone have dissolved, as if by acid, leaving shapes only vaguely recognizable as once having lived. These poor souls aren’t the only displays of such dissolution: Almost everything in this room shows signs of being melted by a powerful acid. The furniture, the walls, and the floor all bear marks. On the floor, distinct footprints sink about half an inch into the planks. These footprints, some humanoid and some smaller and less recognizable, march all over the room.

Alchemical Mayhem

Plenty of alchemical mixtures remain on desks throughout the room. The chaos of normal combat is enough to topple them from their precarious perches. Any number of effects could occur as they shatter, spill, and mix with each other or with substances already on the ground.

The GM should designate up to 6 squares that have intact potions and alchemical pools. A sludge brute entering such a square consumes the potion or pool and gains 3d8 temporary hit points through Alchemical Consumption. A character may spot a pile containing an intact potion with a Spot check (DC 15).

At the end of every round of combat in this room, roll on the Combat Side Effects table to see what effects the mixing chemicals and crashing test tubes create. You can also roll on the table during especially violent attacks or egregious misses (for example, when a character cast a spell that affects an area, or rolls a 1 when firing an arrow).

Fire Clock

Unless the characters take great pains to extinguish the numerous fires, they will eventually spread and consume the entire structure. Use the threat of the building burning down to add time pressure to the encounter if needed, especially if the PCs insist on leaving and reentering the building several times.

If the other environmental threats are just not enough, you can also spread fire into squares as you desire. Creatures moving through a flaming square take 1d6 points of damage and must make Reflex saves (DC 15) to avoid catching on fire.

The Big Bad

One of the sludge brutes here consumed the laboratory workers, while the other could only feast upon the lab’s unlucky pet dog. The creatures have not been here long enough to cause the entire structure to disintegrate, and they look hungrily upon any new prey that enters.

The small sludge brute looks like a dog-shaped blob of goo. The large sludge brute is definitely humanoid; it even has rudimentary facial features. Because of the volatile chemicals that went into its makeup, the large sludge brute has vulnerability to cold rather than fire.

A Spot or Listen check (opposed by the creatures’ Hide and Move Silently checks) allows a PC to avoid surprise.

Further Adventures

The events in this encounter can lead to other encounters or more detailed adventures. Some possibilities are:

• A Magical Mystery: Clues at the various scenes of the brute attacks might indicate a Khadoran saboteur or maybe a Khadoran assassin was involved in the creation of the brutes. The golden signet ring indicates he is targeting Golden Crucible members.
  • Day in the Life: In the aftermath of clearing the burned building a new entry into the underworld is discovered. This section looks both ancient and unused.
  • The Benefits of Science: The golden signet ring leads the PCs the identity of the employer of the gobber spies, leaving Gamack to contemplate some industrial espionage of his own.

Sweet Loot

The initial explosion may have ruined or destroyed most of the building’s contents but there are still treasures to be found. Several potions are intact in the lab, but the sludge brutes threaten to consume them.

• The advanced sludge brute has a golden signet ring (worth 600 gp) stuck inside it, strangely untouched by its corrosive nature.
  • A thorough Search check (DC 20) in one of the debris areas reveals a dead gobber assistant lying atop an intact mechanical wand of crush construct (see IKCG p. 362).
  • A pair of leather Alchemist’s Beards (Iron Kingdoms gas masks) are on the shelves. Donning an Alchemist’s Beard takes a full round action but provides a +10 equipment bonus to saves against the fumes or other gas attacks. Characters wearing an Alchemists’s Beard cannot cast spells with a verbal component. Each is worth 125 gp.
• PCs that rescue any lab workers or alchemist have gained their respect and gratitude. Characters might call in a favor or get reduced rates on alchemical equipment in the future.

Fonte: No Quarter 15

Not all exotic creatures live solely in the wilds of Immoren. Some haunt our cites and lurk in the shadows of our towers and walls. A few such mis-shapen beasts, I must confess, arose not from nature but from human accident or hubris, tarnishing our claim as a beacon of civilization in a dark and cruel world. Let me share one such case.

My colleague the apothecary Beatrice Malandy first told me of a thing she named a sludge brute. An alchemist of no small means, Beatrice, like many prominent alchemists in Cygnar, had received a contract to produce for the war. After many days of brewing potions, oils, and elixirs, a great and diverse amount of alchemical waste material had accrued, leaving her gobber assistant Glug to decide where to dump it.

Rather than let it sink beneath the oily waves of the Black River or drain into the byways of the undercity, Glug took to experiments of this own. This went largely unnoticed, said Beatrice, until an explosion consumed Glug’s secret
lab and evidently Glug with it. All that remained to mark his failed experiment was a smoking pool of chemical sludge.

Such tragic incidents occur all too frequently, I am told. However an even more horrific consequence of the explo-sive experiment came to light a day later. Returning to her lab Beatrice discovered it ransacked and almost every potion in her shipment to the army at Deepwood Tower unstopped and drained. At first she suspected a saboteur, perhaps an agent of Khador or even a jealous mage of the Fraternal Order. Not a wizard to be trifled with Beatrice used her arcane knowledge to track the culprit back to the site of Glug’s secret lab. Here she confronted the unlikely saboteur, a roughly gobber sized mass of living sludge eager to consume her flesh in order to grow more powerful. Not bestowed with the patience and curiosity of a naturalist, the young wizard attempted to scour the creation from the face of Caen but only succeeded in driving it away.

I do not know exactly how these creatures originate, whether from a particular mixture of chemicals, because of an enchantment, or some other reason. What I know is that they are fearsome urban predators with a desire to devour living creatures. They do so in order to fuel their own growth. Horrifically, these creatures take on some of the traits and even the
vague appearance of creatures they consume, and I hope never to encounter one I recognize as man-shaped.

Combat

A typical sludge brute measures 2 feet thick and 5 feet fall and weights 250 lbs. They may stretch Sludge brutes go out of their way to devour alchemical substances and creatures carrying alchemical substances. Instinct tells them to sneak up and ambush prey, but they are not particu-larly intelligent. After their initial attacks, their combat tactics are straightforward.

A sludge brute secretes an acid that slowly dis-solves organic, metal, and even stone but does not affect glass. Any melee hit or grapple causes acid damage and triggers alchemical touch.

A sludge brute can gain temporary hit points by consuming a potion or magical elixir. The more powerful the potion, the more the sludge brute benefits.

A sludge brute’s touch has unpre-dictable effects, like sleep, confusion, paralysis ou poison.

Material Adicional: Monsternomicon d20 vol. 2