Full Description
Though it is called Balisk Lichen, it can be found in any region frequented by a stone transforming lifeform (Balisk, Medusa, etc). It is a strong (nearly impossible to remove) green lichen that is “fuzzy”, like a short green grassy fur. It only grows upon organic materials that have been turned to stone. The lichen will break down transformed lifeforms into rubble. It then expands and grows upon the rubble. Eventually it breaks the rubble down completely, converts into spoors and joins the wind.
The lichen is very toxic when “alive”. Nothing eats it. (It can not be made into a poison because the compound goes innert if it dies (which it does within minutes of being pulled from a rock). Well that is not true. Balisks and other stone transforming creatures have been known to lick and eat the lichen off the rubble. Their salivia seems to disolve the connection between the lichen and the rock. The lichen seems to be the digestive medium for the Stoners. It is concentrated nutrition pulled from the previously organic material.
November 6, 2005, 1:15
November 9, 2005, 13:11
November 9, 2005, 14:10
November 14, 2005, 0:30
September 23, 2006, 14:32
This has two fuctions in a campaign
1) This explains the ecology of your stone making creatures. Everything has to eat, how do these things eat?
2) By making an appropriate nature check, you will know there is a stone gaze creature in the area. Thus the skill will come in handy and the appropriate PCs forwarned.
November 26, 2005, 23:02
September 23, 2006, 14:30
The Saliva will probably promote the grown of the surviving lichen (GOOD IDEA) for two reasons. One, it make more space for it to regrow. Two is that it probably has compounds that are needed for its life... thus increasing the symbiosis between the litchen and a stone making creature.
Perhaps the "Stoner" transfers the litchen from statue to stature as well in its salivia. Maybe in a "high acid" environment, it is just an intestinal flora. In a low acid one, it become the litchen.
September 23, 2006, 19:04
"From your vantage point on the bluff, you can make out the gorgon approaching the statues that once were your cohorts. She begins licking them all over their bodies."
Ewww!
September 23, 2006, 20:39
Would also love to have a PC with a stone arm, or something, and let him have this take form on him.
--
Doctor: Sorry Grom, the only cure for this is to have a Balisk lick off every remnant of the lichen.
Grom: Is that it?
Doctor: Yep, once the lichen is removed you should simply keep it out of the air so more lichen spore don't find it and germinate.
Grom: Damn.
January 29, 2009, 13:56
June 15, 2010, 11:00
July 2, 2014, 13:32