#burbur

🙂

I worked my magic

Image by Dave LaForce, © TSR, inc.

[The burbur is a monster I first encountered years ago, before I knew how to play D&D, but when I already was fascinated by this repository of weird and creative monsters. In those Web 1.0 days, there were people who had uploaded copies of monsters from the 2e Monstrous Compendiums online, and I read every one I could before they got shut down for copyright infringement.

I remember the burbur from those days, because I put it into my own free-form RPGs I ran for my friends in middle school, before getting into D&D proper. The burbur was, of course, the solution to a puzzle of how to get through a room filled with green slime.]

Burbur CR ¼ N Aberration This sausage shaped yellowish creature has a single pair of limbs ending in nimble, gripping digits. It has glittering black eyes and a proboscis.

Burburs are seemingly harmless, vaguely maggot-like creatures that are immune to some of the most common and notorious dungeon hazards. They find green slime delicious; they bask in yellow mold spores; they are utterly unafraid of violet fungi. Burburs live on plant and fungal matter, the more toxic and noxious the better. A burbur will not attack any animal or humanoid unless sorely pressed, and their enzymes are much more dangerous to vegetable than animal matter. As such, adventurers seek them out to use as hazardous materials disposal.

On the open market, a burbur may sell for as much as 1,000 gp. They are content to be kept in small enclosures so long as they are well fed, but if they go without a meal of toxic fungi or plant matter for a week, they will attempt to escape their captors and seek out food. Their secretions can and do damage wooden objects, so they are typically kept in metal cages or in stone rooms. They make soft cooing noises (the name is onomatopoeia) and smell faintly of cinnamon.

Wild burburs typically live in caves and dungeons, but can be found in marshes and forests as well. They like dark, damp environments. Burbur flesh is terribly toxic, containing remains of the compounds from the plants and fungi they eat, and so most predators leave them alone. Burburs often lair near toxic plants, slimes or molds, and are intelligent enough to leave these alive to function as a defense. Burburs are typically solitary, but multiple individuals may converge on a large green slime patch or during a bloom of toxic mushrooms. During the spring if they are particularly well fed, burburs may reproduce, which they do via fission.