Hoarder [LINKS] (Patreon)

Collectors Wandering the Endless Battlefields

Hoarders can be found long after the last soldier has fallen, silently making its way across the battlefields to gather weapons and armor for its collection. While its ooze cousins seem to have little use or interest in the remnants of their victims floating within them, the hoarder has adapted to weaponize them in its stead. A long-lived hoarder takes something akin to pride in its treasure trove of ancient steel, thereby making them valuable targets for those looking to strike it rich. 

Animate Metal. Unlike other oozes that fail to recognize the value of coins, metal gear, and more suspended within their bodies, a hoarder is capable of extruding parts of itself in order to animate these valuables in its stead. The weapons and armor that slough off of the ooze rise with joints of jelly, swinging rusted blades towards their prospective new comrades. 

One Ooze Army. With each adventurer that falls, the ooze’s ranks grow ever larger.  With time, a hoarder can amass enough armored corpses to puppet to constitute a small army. Though it and its pawns lack what could be constituted as true intelligence, they work collectively as a unit in battle, making them a more significant threat than one may assume. When the surrounding area has been cleared of any materials of interest to the hoarder, it moves onward alongside its many soldiers surrounding it. 

Historical Wonders. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the hoarder, its love of actively seeking out valuable metals makes it perfect prey for treasure hunters and historical preservationists. Whatever their motivations, many jump at the chance to defeat a hoarder in hopes of acquiring wealth and valuables, only to be overwhelmed by growing hordes of metal plated corpses. This relationship means that a hoarder is never short on resources for more pawns, only making it more difficult to destroy on future attempts. 

Down the hall you see a lumbering shape crawl around the corner, torchlight shimmering through its barely translucent body. As the mass moves towards you, you catch the glimmer of coins, blades, and armor suspended within the mass, their clinking muffled by the gelatinous mass. Suddenly, a suit of armor drops with a wet thud beside the hulking ooze before reassembling itself by means of oily tendrils snaking between its joints. And then there were two.

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