#mezlan

This thing is sick as hell and maybe my all-time favorite creature on this entire list. I try not to give my own opinion on most of these creatures for fear that my evershifting level of hyperfixation won't let me describe it enough to warrant such praise but ah well. You'll just have to take my word for it even if I don't do enough to give it the limelight.

My initial thoughts on the Mezlan were pretty poor, as in the first cursory readings of any bestiary the image carries a lot of the weight and I just didn't really get captured by an ooze that just looks like a person. I kinda just assumed that it would be some sort of shapeshifting ooze, which there are a few of now. Admittedly all the shapeshifting ooze are pretty cool but as a base concept I would need more than that in order to peak my interest.

The Mezlan were built as the ultimate warriors of a bygone empire. Their bodies have resisted the passage of time by being bioengineered under severe conditions. This has turned them into amorphous beings, capability of reconstituting even after the most destructive circumstances. Even when 'killed' with acid, further significant energy damage must be applied to them or they will return over the process of several years.

This has ensured that they are the perfect long-term assailants for high priority assignments in planar and empirical schemes. As they have outlived there own empires, they are excellent tools for those that can acquire their services. However, it may be that a Mezlan requires a great deal more than money to assuage its tastes. Each of the ones that exist gave up their lives completely willingly to a life of constant militarism. Only those who hold a true ideology for their now eradicated nations would have ever committed themselves to this, although it is unclear if they knew just how well the experiments would take.

This is one of few creatures built off of standard humanoids where the system more prefers militant and martial entities over casters, although a few of the latter also exist. Personally, I like the rare opportunity this lends towards for the more grizzled psyche of a war veteran and would lean towards using martials myself.

“Slime Monk” © Dylan Pock, accessed at his deviantArt here

[Commissioned by @coldbloodassassin. Sort of. They wanted a version of the Rev-9 Terminator from Terminator: Dark Fate. The gimmick of that movie is that the enemy Terminator can split into a T-1000 and T-800 at the same time! Which strikes me as a little pandering. I didn’t want to do it as a robot, especially since Pathfinder RPG already has its own version of the T-1000, the mezlan. So I made my version a mezlan variant, keeping the splitting gimmick and giving it the ability to condense its body to get that “metal skeleton” look going if you want it.]

Mezlan, Revine CR 16 NE Ooze This slimy creature shapes itself into a humanoid outline, growing its limbs into an array of weaponry. It begins to split, each half seemingly as capable and deadly as the other.

The mezlans are shapeshifting creatures that combine the features of oozes and constructs, created in the distant past and remaining in the dark recesses of the world. Although the baseline mezlan was designed for infiltration and stealth, other models do exist with other specialized functions. The revine mezlan is one of these elite models, designed for missions of assassination and elimination of well-protected targets. They are implacable killing machines, and will not stop until their targets are dead. They vary in alignment and personality as “ordinary” mezlans do, but are often evil due to the nature of their missions.

A revine has very precise control of its shapeshifting ability, able to grow new limbs to serve as weapons, squeeze through tiny cracks and crevices, or harden itself into an iron-like shell. They can also divide, which often proves a lethal surprise for enemies expecting a single target. They split in order to set up flanking positions, or to give chase to fleeing enemies while a defender stands its ground. A revine can remain split indefinitely, but its regeneration ceases to work shortly after the split occurs, and a revine must recombine in order to heal itself. Although revines make great use of their morphic weaponry, they often collect other weapons, particularly wands and ranged weapons in order to increase the distance they are capable of striking from.

Before and after.