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Description
The slavering assimilator is not so much an individual creature as it is an insidious colony of single-celled organisms which imitate in both form and behavior any living thing they encounter. In its original form, this horrific thing ranges from six to eight feet in height with three hateful glowing red eyes. Writhing tendrils sprout forth from the pulpy, misshapen orb that passes for the thing's head.
In this form the creature is dangerous enough, but the fact that any given piece of this creature can potentially infect, ingest and mimic countless creatures of any species makes it a threat of the highest order. It is effectively a very dangerous and aggressive plague. If allowed to assimilate all life on a planet, it would revert to an amorphous protoplasmic ooze which would eventually devour all life.
Once encountered, the creature must be defeated and destroyed to the last particle (fire or acid make for particularly effective disposal methods) or it will either continue to attack or become dormant only to wait for another group of hapless victims. If the adventuring party fails to deal with it, they may find the next city or town infested with assimilators, or worse!
Ecology & Tactics
Slavering assimilators avoid direct combat if possible and prefer to hide in the shadows and pick off adventurers one by one, replacing them with assimilated copies. If attacked, it will respond quickly with whatever natural weapon it deems most appropriate to the situation.
When under attack or interrupted during an assimilation, the creature drops all pretense of imitation and attacks with a ferocity that matches its desire to survive. It will rapidly and grotesquely deploy any and all natural weapons in its biological arsenal acquired through millenia of ingesting a wide variety of creatures to defend itself from aggressors.
These defensive mutations can appear with alarming, unnatural suddenness and strike with deadly effect. A small but incomplete sampling is found in the Defensive Mutations chart. Feel free to add others. This is definitely a creature that benefits from improvisation during gameplay.
Notes
If played to the hilt, this thing is a potentially world-ending monster and is sure to undermine trust between members of any adventuring party. Of course, it can also be used largely for it's substantial gross-out potential as well.
