The Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther    from DRAGON(R) issue #160

All talk but no brains, with a bottomless appetite to boot

by Nigel D. Findley

(C)1990 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

    "Lykan."
    There are times when a single word can be more startling than
a heavy-handed clap on the shoulder. Lykan is my birth name. The
problem? It wasn't the name I was using at the time.
    I turned around toward the speaker with an inane grin and a
denial on my lips. "I'm sorry, kind sir, but you must have
mistaken me for . . . oh, bloody hell." (That last bit came as I
saw who was accosting me.)
    I'm a big man--unfortunate, since it's hard to disguise
size--but this guy was even bigger. The impression of size
wasn't hurt by the fact that he was carrying a mace the size of a
small watchtower, and by the fact that he stood a full head
taller than the two fighters in plate mail who flanked him.
    I knew his face, of course. Who doesn't know the face of the
vice prelate, second-ranking cleric in the Order of the Prelacy?
I knew his name, too--Reifus, endearingly nicknamed "the Pagan
Hammer" --and he obviously knew mine, which he proceeded to
demonstrate a second time.
    "You are Lykan," he said in a growl that would make a war dog
proud, "the thief."
    I glanced over my shoulder at my audience, which was
listening with growing interest, and I gestured for him to lower
his voice. "Peace, good sir," I said, playing to the gallery.
"Perhaps we can clear up this . . . misunderstanding." I stepped
closer to him--his bodyguards stiffened--keeping my hands in
plain sight and a fawning smile on my face.
    "You are Lykan," he growled again. But this time his voice
was pitched lower. "I have need of your services."
    With an effort, I kept astonishment off my face. "Well,
then," I said, "perhaps we can deal."
    He scowled. "I talk. You obey. I let you live."
    Whatever happened to the fine art of negotiation? I sighed.
"All right."
    They escorted me to the Prelacy's headquarters, the
Basilica--you know the building, the only church built
according to the Ancient Barbarian Fortress school of
architecture--and into a reception room large enough for the
prelate to receive a full battalion, should it strike his fancy.
I stood while the Pagan Hammer sat on an ornate wooden throne
(the throne normally reserved for the prelate). I raised an
eyebrow.
    Reifus nodded and answered the unspoken question. "Yes. The
prelate has gone to his eternal reward, as the Father wills." He
made a complex gesture, but his heart wasn't in it and his
presentation was desultory. Then he got down to business. "The
Order of the Prelacy keeps its coffers and its treasures within
this Basilica," he said--and I could hear the capital
letters--"within the Vault of the Holies. You probably know
that, considering your occupation."
    Though he said it with a sneer, I took it as a compliment to
my thorough research. "Of course," I told him. "And I also know
that the vault is guarded by a trap that your prelate designed
himself. What of it?"
    Reifus raised his eyes to whatever heaven the prelate was now
occupying, and he controlled himself with an effort. "Yes, the
trap. That's where your skills will prove of use."
    I caught on then and tried not to giggle. "He didn't tell you
how to disarm it, did he? How inconsiderate of him."
    Reifus scowled again; he was very good at scowling. "I
need--the Order needs to gain access to the treasures. You will
disarm the trap and open the vault."
    "And if I won't?"
    His face was like a rock. "Then I shall kill you."
    I sighed, having already known the answer to that question.
"I need some information first. What's in the vault?"
    "You have no need to know," he said gruffly.
    "Well, did the prelate leave any notes behind--personal
writings, anything like that?"
    "You have no need to know."
    Again, I sighed. "When did he set up the trap? Where had he
been just beforehand? What had he been reading? Tell me anything
that'll give me a clue--"
    He cut me off. "You have no--"
    "--need to know. Right." I ground my teeth in frustration.
"Look, did the prelate know he was dying, and did he tell
anyone--[anyone]--the secret?"
    The Pagan Hammer's lips made a single thin line. He stared at
me in a new and uncomfortable way. "Yes, he knew he was dying,
but no, he didn't tell anyone." There was a strange tone to the
cleric's voice. I made a mental note not to ask in any depth
[how] the prelate had met his maker.
    I gave up. "Okay, you win. Take me to the vault."
    He did. Down into the bowels of the Basilica we went,
eventually stopping in front of a heavy ironbound door. Reifus
dismissed the two guards who'd been dogging my steps. I watched
them leave, then turned to the cleric with a nasty grin. "So you
think, wearing your armor and packing your mace, you're more than
a match for a sniveling, unarmed thief. Is that what you
think?"
    "Yes," he said.
    I glanced him up and down a moment, then put my mind on
business and looked at the door. "Is this the vault?"
    "The first door."
    "And beyond the first door?"
    "The second door."
    His dialogue was beginning to irritate me. "What if I just
refuse to go any further?"
    "I'll kill you."
    "And if I try but fail?"
    "If the trap doesn't kill you, I will."
    I was as good as dead, so I quit stalling. I pulled out my
thieves' kit and turned to the lock--big, clunky, old
fashioned. I laugh at locks like that. I laughed at this lock
now, picked it, and swung open the door. Just before I stepped
through, I said to Reifus, "Shut the door behind me, but don't
lock it. And don't come in, or I just might disarm the trap by
letting you walk into it." His expression told me I had no worry
on that score; the thought of the trap scared the religion out of
him. I grabbed a lit torch from a sconce on the wall and stepped
through the first door. Reifus shut the door behind me.
    There was a short passageway between the first and second
doors. I scanned the floor for trip wires, trapped stones--the
usual things. There was nothing. But when I rested my hand on the
stonework beside the second door, the surface felt slightly warm.
Oh-ho, I thought.
    I knew something about the prelate--my research was even
better than Reifus thought. While he was working his way up the
hierarchical ladder, the prelate had been a busy boy with his
traps, setting up tricky protections for various church
valuables. Like any ambitious thief checking out the prize purses
in his territory, I'd read everything I could about the prelate's
masterworks, and I was impressed (as much as I can be by an
amateur, that is). The prelate, it seems, favored biological
traps. In fact, he might have been the one who conceived that
oft-imitated beauty where the trap dumps the victim into a
gelatinous cube. With that in mind, I knew exactly what was on
the other side of the door.
    I pulled a glob of soft wax out of my thieves' kit and
quickly fashioned a pair of earplugs. Next, out came some gauze
from my first-aid supplies (it pays to be prepared); I bound a
strip across my eyes. I could still see, but dimly--which is
how I wanted to see. I picked the lock--it was as easy as
picking my teeth--and swung open the second door. Prepared as I
was, I almost choked on the reek of ammonia and other noxious
substances that wafted out.((1))
    There it was, just as expected: a gibbering mouther, the
prelate's biological trap, sitting in the middle of a bare room
with glass-lined walls.
    Gods, but it was ugly in the torchlight--all eyes and
mouths, like a bevy of stool pigeons. The mouther lurched its
green, slimy body toward me, all its mouths working. Some were
biting at the floor, pulling its nasty bulk along; others were
babbling nonstop.
    Imagine all the inmates of an asylum talking, screaming, and
mumbling all at once. The noise the mouther was making was even
worse than that--or it would have been, if I could have heard
it through my earplugs. At least madmen speak in voices that are
human. The mouther doesn't; its din is a combination of sounds
resembling human voices, animal noises, and things you would
rather not think about. It's enough to unseat your reason. It's
the sound of chaos incarnate--not just the voices of the
insane, but the voice of insanity itself. It's the voice of every
creature that makes up the mouther, each crying out its
torment.
    I used to wonder where the mouther got all of its eyes and
mouths. One day someone told me. There's a theory--and I've no
reason to dispute it--that creatures absorbed by a mouther
become [part] of the mouther.((2)) Their minds merge
with its mind, and they exist forever, irreversibly mad, in a
horrible form of living death. When I saw this mouther, I
believed it all.
    I know a little about mouthers (it's good business to learn
at least something about all the things in the world that want to
eat you), but I don't know where they come from. Apparently, no
one does. Some cite these hideous creatures as examples of why
mages shouldn't be allowed to perform magic.
    Gibbering mouthers are very hard to kill. People will tell
you the mouther's brain is buried somewhere in its middle, and
that's why it's so hard to land a telling blow. Actually, the
creature's nervous system is distributed throughout its bulk; it
has no distinct organ that you can point at and call a brain. Hit
a small pseudopod and you're just as likely--or unlikely--to
hit brain tissue as you are when you run the beast through with a
battle lance. You can't even suffocate it properly.((3))
    One thing I do know about mouthers reinforces one of my pet
peeves. I've got some advice for people (like the ex-prelate) who
do their own traps: Don't. Use a thief to stop a thief. I could
have told the prelate the problem with the gibbering mouther.
Yes, it'll confuse, it'll kill, it'll eat anyone who comes in to
steal your treasure. But if left alone long enough, it'll [eat
]your treasure--that is, if the treasure's not on fire.
That's why I wasn't too surprised to find a bare room--once a
treasure room--at the end of the passage.((4))
    I didn't stop to ponder all of this then and there. I acted.
Otherwise, I would have known the mouther's secrets more
intimately than I really cared to. I backpedaled fast, just as
the monster advanced and one of its mouths cut loose with a nasty
gob of saliva. The liquid struck the wall behind me (I duck fast)
and exploded impressively. I almost dropped the torch when I felt
the heat and pressure from the burst on my back. Even through the
gauze, the flash was impressive enough to almost blind me.
Mouther spittle contains what alchemists call ammonium iodide, an
unstable compound and an effective contact explosive: lots of
flash, some punch, and an impressive bang. It's easy to concoct
in a lab; I've used it myself on occasion. But the mouther does
it naturally.((5))
    I kept moving back. The mouther kept advancing. The stone
floor around the monster smelled like it was baking; it was
probably beginning to soften now that the creature was out of its
glass-lined cell. This was just another of the mouther's tricks.
Lots of people think a mouther's control over ground consistency
is magical. Not really; it secretes a hellish mixture of acids,
solvents, and other foul fluids that break down the integrity of
stone. The heat I felt was simply the heat liberated by this
chemical reaction--an exothermic reaction, an alchemist friend
called it. If there's any magic, it's in the fact that the
mouther can wallow in this corrosive stuff and not dissolve
itself. (Incidentally, that's why the room was lined with glass.
The prelate must have known something about mouthers. Glass is
one of the few substances they can't digest.)
    The mouther let fly with another spitball--flash,
bang!--but I was out of there, already at the other end of the
corridor by the first door. Mouthers are nasty beggars, but
they're slow. I had enough time to take off the gauze blindfold,
remove the earplugs, and pocket the lot. Then I threw the torch
at the mouther as it closed in. A mouth opened to catch it, and
the flame went out immediately. The mouther shut up, probably
startled by the pain. I opened the door just enough to slip
through, then shut it calmly behind me.
    Reifus was anything but calm, almost hopping from foot to
foot. His face was streaked with sweat. I smiled up at his face
and said casually, "Piece of cake."
    His jaw dropped. "You did it?"
    I didn't dignify his question with an answer. "Everything
that's in there is yours."
    Reifus stared hard into my eyes. But if the eyes are windows
to the soul, I'd long ago learned how to close the shutters.
    I knew Reifus intended to kill me, but not until he'd made
sure of his new-found wealth. He opened the door and stepped
inside, striding down the dark hall. I remembered only at the
last second to slap my hands over my ears.
    His scream was very, very loud, louder than the babble. I
wished I'd kept the earplugs in. I won't trouble you with details
on my subsequent escape.
    I suppose I could have told him the mouther was probably just
on the other side of the door--that, I [could] have
done. But then again, I figured he had no need to know.


Footnotes
    1. Under ideal conditions, a mouther's pungent reek can give
warning of its presence up to 20' away.
    2. A mouther drains blood and nutrients from its
victim--hence the additional 1 hp damage per round per mouth
attached. When the victim reaches zero hit points and falls into
a terminal coma, the mouther flows over the body and begins to
absorb it. The mouther secretes digestive juices that dissolve
the victim's outer tissue. Complete dissolution takes 1d6+2
rounds for a human-size body; the body is irrecoverable after
1d3+1 rounds. The secretions have an additional effect, however:
they supply the nutrients needed by the victim's brain and
nervous system to keep the creature alive. The tissues making up
the victim's central nervous system and its eyes are absorbed
into the mouther, intact and functional. Though the nervous
tissues are spread throughout the bulk of the mouther, they
remain in contact through thin fibrils of mouther nervous tissue.
The victim's brain, therefore, never actually dies, and its anima
(its soul or spirit, as described on page 10 of the AD&D 1st
Edition [Legends & Lore]) is never freed. Thus, a creature
absorbed by a mouther cannot be [reincarnated] or
[resurrected], and cannot be contacted through a [speak
with dead] spell, since the victim is not strictly dead. It
is only when the mouther is slain that the victim's anima is free
to travel to the Outer or Inner plane awaiting it.
    Once the absorption is complete, the mouther grows new eyes
to surround and utilize the victim's corneas. The victim's teeth
are not affected by the enzymes since the enzymes cannot dissolve
dental enamel, and these are also "pirated" for use by the
mouther.
    Absorption by a mouther invariably causes the victim to go
incurably insane. The mind of a victim known to have been
absorbed by a mouther can be contacted through [ESP,
telepathy], and similar spells, but with great difficulty (+6
bonus to saving throws, for spells that allow them). The mind is
totally insane, however, and nothing of use can be communicated
to or learned from the absorbed intelligence. In fact, there is a
cumulative 25% chance per round of contact that the spell-caster
performing such mind reading will become insane for 1d4+8 rounds
following such contact.
    3. Metabolically, the mouther is as confused as its
appearance implies. Though it doesn't breathe in the traditional
sense, some parts of its body require oxygen and some do not (the
latter using other chemicals to respire). As a consequence, it is
impossible to asphyxiate a mouther: it simply shifts to anaerobic
respiration so that it no longer requires oxygen. Similarly,
poisonous gases (e.g., [cloudkill]) are ineffective; the
mouther shifts its metabolism to a different system that is
unaffected by the poisonous gas. Injected and ingestive poisons
are somewhat effective against a mouther (though the creature
saves at +6), because these typically cause tissue damage in
addition to their metabolic effects.)
    4. A gibbering mouther eats virtually anything, whether the
food is animal, vegetable, or mineral. While it prefers animal
tissue (preferably still alive and kicking) and vegetable matter,
the mouther can also absorb and make use of most metals and
minerals. This is a consequence of its strange metabolism:
Virtually anything can be incorporated into its makeup or used as
a life-giving nutrient. If there is no animal or plant tissue
available, a mouther can change its metabolism so as to sustain
itself by absorbing other material. If they actually swallow or
absorb it, mouthers can dissolve and utilize any material except
dental enamel (i.e., teeth), glass, diamond, adamantite, and
mithral. These materials are resistant to all of its corrosive
secretions and are eventually expelled.
    When it is well fed, a mouther can reproduce through binary
fission, much like an amoeba; one mouther becomes two smaller
mouthers. The offspring are initially 2 HD but grow to full size
(assuming an adequate food supply is available) in 3-6 months.
Offspring have the full powers of an adult from the outset. When
a mouther divides, its mouths and eyes are typically shared
evenly between its offspring. When a mouther has insufficient
food or must live on minerals, it does not reproduce.
    5. These secretions are also highly corrosive to flesh.
Touching a mouther causes 1d4 hp corrosive damage to bare flesh.
Metals are unaffected unless they remain in contact with the
mouther for an extended time or are absorbed. Nonmetallic
weapons, armor, and other items (e.g., wooden clubs, staves,
leather armor, etc.) that come in contact with a mouther for even
an instant must save vs. acid or dissolve immediately and become
useless.

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