Melhed/Agyrain Academy/Archive/Monster/Manual M-P
| Mudmucks | |
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| Descriptions | |
| Mudmucks are as common as the mud they come from, and have been spotted across all the known world. They have varied shapes, sizes, and compositions, but the core is always the same: They are composed of river muck, whatever is common to rivers in the area, and they always have a piece of metal (usually iron) buried deep inside. They agglomerate more muck to themselves as they age, so the larger the mudmuck, the older and (usually) tougher it is.
The reason mudmucks are not more feared is simple: They are quite mindless, having considerably less cunning than any animal. They would not even be dangerous to humans were it not for their constantly seeking metal. A mudmuck who finds a bit of metal will calve off part of itself and form a new mudmuck around this new metal heart. To kill a mudmuck, it is as simple (though not necessarily easy) as removing this metal heart from them, and the mud loses its animating force and returns to simple sludge.
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| Rumours & Second-hand Accounts | |
| Not all metal will work (no tales exist of mudmucks with silver hearts, for instance), and the more worked the metal the less likely it seems that mudmucks will use it. There are common stories of mudmucks ignoring piles of weapons, armour, and coin, only to seize upon a single bar of unworked iron in a smelter, and fisherfolk report that they will ignore their hooks but find a bit of ore drifting downriver from a mine more to their liking.
According to a Davie Catrinson, an adventurer in Caligus on the East Continent, the easiest way to deal with them is with a sieve to find the iron heart within them. He was clearly unfamiliar with mudmucks using different metals, and this may be explained by his primary hunting grounds being downriver of an iron mine, perhaps. Nets have been used in some cases on mudmucks with larger hearts, but as the size of the mudmuck and the size of its heart bear no relation, it is dangerous to attempt this, and should only be done as a last resort. | |
