Sebez - Numenera Creature

    Okay, time now for another creature. One thing I've noticed about the Numenera creatures is that they tend to be outdoor-focused, with a somewhat lacking assortment of dungeon-focused creatures. I think from now on I'll put a little more emphasis on dungeon monsters, so as to correct this lack.
    With that, I bring you:

Sebez          5 (15)

    Sebezes are serpentine automatons of sleek, black-metal rings, roughly 12 feet long, but only as big around as a man's waist. The head is an array of spidery metal arms tipped with surgical tools and sensory equipment, which the sebez uses to pursue its passion.

    It is theorized that sebezes were invented by a prior world to serve as robotic surgeons, capable of performing surgery with a speed and skill impossible for an organic being. However, with the passing of eons and the disappearance of their masters, sebezes' programming has been corrupted, and now they perform surgery on anyone they can find, preferably sapient, willing or otherwise.

Motive: Insane desire to perform surgery

Environment: Anywhere. Sebezes are solitary, and prefer to lair in caves and ruins in or near communities of humans or other sapient creatures.

Health: 18

Damage Inflicted: 5

Armor: 2

Movement: Short

Modifications: Surgery as level 10, numenera and stealth as level 7

Combat: Sebezes prefer to avoid combat, when possible. They prefer to use stealth to stalk their prey and wait until they are asleep or otherwise vulnerable before striking.

    Instead of a regular attack, sebezes can choose to inject their prey with a sedative. If the attack succeeds, the victim takes no damage, but must succeed on a level 8 Might defense or fall into a drugged sleep from which they cannot be roused. The victim can make a Might defense once per hour to wake up, and every hour the level of the roll decreases by one. The sedative does not take hold immediately, and if used on someone who is wide awake it will take at least 10 minutes to kick in. Administering sedative is painless and will not wake a sleeping victim.

    Surgery: A victim captured by a sebez will invariably be sedated and brought back to its lair for surgery. Any given surgery takes 1d6+3 hours, during which time the victim must make 3 level 3 Might defense actions, once at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Failure of any one of these drives the victim down the damage track by one. A sebez will perform surgery on its victim once per day until they either die or the sebez is slain. Pick a random surgery from the table below:

1. Bionic eyes. Roll 1d6. You can now see: 1 - infrared, 2 - ultraviolet, 3 - electro-magnetic fields, 4 - radiation, 5 - dead people, 6 - as before.
2. Brain implant. +4 to Intellect pool; "robotic" personality damage increases difficulty of pleasant social interaction by 1.
3. Datalink. You have a plug in your temple or neck. If you use it to plug into a device, you can identify and learn to operate it as though the task were one level lower. Also, you see glimmers at least once a week, or twice as often, where applicable.
4. Muscle weave. +4 to Might pool. -2 to Speed pool from constant stiffness and pain.
5. Bionic limbs. +1 armor, +2 to a Might or Speed pool. You also gain the Special Healing inability from the Fuses Flesh and Steel focus (Numenera corebook pg 64), except that only the first 3 points are affected.
6. Adrenal implant. +2 to Might and Speed pools. At the start of every combat, there is a 5% chance you fly into a screaming, bestial rage during which you cannot make any Intellect actions.
7. Artificial lungs. You can now breathe underwater or in any oxygen-containing atmosphere, regardless of quality. However, you take -2 to your Might pool, and the constant bellows-like sound of your lungs increases the difficulty of all stealth tasks by one.
8. Auto-defibrillator. If an attack or other damage source should kill you, assuming your body is still mostly intact, you have a 50% of coming back to life. You come back unconscious and debilitated, with your Might and Speed pool at 0 and your Intellect pool at 1. Success or failure, the device only activates once.

Interaction: Sebezes are intelligent, and capable of rapidly learning new languages, so practically all of them can be expected to speak Truth. However, they are single-minded in the extreme, and care only about securing medical supplies and fresh victims. Parley with a sebez is possible, but only if such an offering is provided while also convincing the creature that the petitioners are capable of destroying it if the sebez does not cooperate. If armed adventurers simply come barging into the sebez's lair, it will more than likely hide and try to ambush them later.

Use: In an isolated village, something has been abducting villagers at night. The victims are mostly drunks and vagrants, but a few people have disappeared from their homes. The villagers are terrified and will pay dearly for a solution.

    Alternatively, the players might intentionally seek out a sebez, desiring a cybernetic implant. A character who Fuses Flesh and Steel might need to see one for an upgrade or a tune-up.

Loot: A sebez's body may contain 1d100 shins, 1d6 cyphers, an oddity and perhaps an artifact. Its lair may contain more.

Alright, and that marks this blog's 10th post! Yay! This was quite a ride, but I'm sorry to say that things will probably slow down hereafter. I expect to put up a new update once a week, but this will vary in accordance with my schedule.

Either way, stay tuned for more exciting adventures aboard the Weird RPG Spaceship! Iadace!