Oculus Inferni

Description

An oculus (plural oculi) is a strange monster, a floating chitinous sphere with a single large eye. How an oculus floats is a matter of much conjecture, but at present there is no agreement among the sages and wizards who have studied them. All oculi ever encountered have been very intelligent, hateful, and cruel; they do not willingly associate with any other intelligent creature, not even other oculi. Only adult oculi have ever been discovered, and their means of reproduction are entirely unknown.

The Oculus Inferni is a particularly vicious form of oculus. Each has only a single large central eye and a large toothy mouth arranged below it, much as the oculus rex (below), but the oculus inferni has no additional eye stalks at all.

The carapace of the oculus inferni has the ability to change colors. While this ability is basic and rather crude, combined with their silent flight ability it grants an otherwise-unsurprised oculus inferni the ability to surprise opponents on 1-3 on 1d6. When battle is joined, the monster's hide changes to a brilliant orange- red color.

While it has a nasty bite, the main power of the oculus inferni is the ability to project a Fireball (as the spell) from its eye once per round. The first Fireball launched does 9d6 points of damage; each subsequent round this damage declines by one dice, i.e. 8d6 on the second round, 7d6 on the third, and so on, to a minimum of 3d6 per fireball. If the oculus inferni has the opportunity to rest, it increases its damage potential by two die in each round it does not use the power, to a maximum of the original 9d6 points of damage. This is often when the monster chooses to bite an opponent, if it thinks it can do so without suffering significant injury. Note that an oculus inferni is immune to all normal fire, as well as magical fire from spells of 3rd level or lower, while it suffers only half-damage from more powerful fire-based attacks.

The oculus inferni will often choose to fly too high to be reached when fighting opponents who have only melee weapons (or who prove to have formidable melee attacks). Though it is vicious and aggressive, this monster is smart enough to choose to attack in ways where it cannot in turn be attacked.

Attacks directed at its main eye may disable it, if damage equal to one-third of its original hit points is inflicted. The main eye will, however, regenerate when the monster's total hit points return to at least two-thirds of normal.

Source note: This creature is converted from The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign – Omnibus Edition, 1st Edition Release 4, © 2010–2025 Chris Gonnerman, R. Kevin Smoot, James Lemon, Matt Sluis, and Contributors. The Basic Fantasy Field Guide textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.

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