Saturday, November 15, 2008

Weekly What the Heck

Welcome to the sixth installment of my regular feature here at the Near TPK. With continuing apologies to one of my favorite blogs, the Daily WTF, I present... The Weekly What The Heck.

Each Saturday at 10 AM Central Time I'll post one of Jen's drawings of some kind of whacked-out creature, and ask my readers: "What the heck IS that?"

I hope my readers will approach the challenge in the spirit of "Yes, and ..." - building on previous responses so everyone's ideas can be used in the final writeup. Comments are now closed on last week's entry, and I hope to have the final writeup posted tonight. Comments will be accepted on this week's entry until I post next week's entry.

So... What the heck is that? What should it do? Does it drown hapless PCs in all that slobber?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is the merfolk equivalent to man's best friend, and companion to underwater hunters everywhere.

rev said...

Most people think it odd that the merhog's tongue drips even underwater...few know, however, that it excretes a powerful adhesive that immobilizes targets where they stand...

Although, this ability can be trained by it's master to be used for malicious intent, the adhesive is more likely intended to keep merfolk stationary so the merhog can continue to lick them...

ChaoticBlackSheep said...

When deprived of water, for example if stranded when the tide changes, a merhog will excrete an excessive amount of only slightly sticky drool to create a wallow in which it can wait. The area surrounding this wallow has the consistency of sticky mud for all that it is usually sand and represents difficult terrain.

Although merhogs are typically not dangerous unless trained to be or unless feral and hungry, a wallowing merhog feels very vulnerable and is likely to lash out at anything (and anyone) that comes near. Many hapless land-dwelling adventurers have met their fates when they happened upon a wallowing merhog.

If an individual or party has a means of communicating with or calming a wallowing merhog, they may be able to help it and return it to the water. If they do, it will be extremely grateful and will help them if it can do so, for example if they are seeking a relic lost at sea, it may help to look or try to retrieve it for them.