The Beast Fears Fire - Polymorphic Kill Beast

Polymorphic Kill Beast [Violence 2]
Impulse - To entrap. It used to be that scholars of all things Underworldly thought that there were a vast number of related but highly specialized ambush predators in the Underworld posing as natural features of the environment, objects, patches of ceiling, wall, floor, cave formations, critters in the water... As it turns out, there are only two: mimics who take the form of furnishings in the furnished parts of the underworld and the polymorphic kill beasts (PKB), which take everything else.

I hope you've caught on to the fact that trying to figure out exactly how these creatures came to be is impossible and pointless. What they're all about, however, is pretty easy to understand; they're hungry. Possibly the most simpleminded creature in the Underworld (and that includes the blind cave fish and hellbenders), they are also some of the most successful. I'm sure that goes to show something.

PKBs are grayish or brownish (they can change color if they want), stony-textured masses of flesh, capable of flattening, reshaping, extruding, twisting or unknitting their bodies into any whatever form is likely to be the best configuration for hunting. They can create infinite number of joints, extrude horns and fangs and claws, puff up with gas and harden until the only way you can tell them from the genuine article is when it wraps around you and tries to kill you. On the rare occasions they need to move, they do so on many ungainly looking legs, like a wireframe of a walking stalagmite, or by flattening and filling up with gas to fly through the galleries and caves. They usually have sort of rudimentary eyes positioned over their body.

Harm - 2/Peril [Strangled] Straightforward ambush predators, PKBs find a place to set up where traffic is high, but not too high, ideally in a place where they can grab prey and be undisturbed or protected from reprisals. When something tasty comes along and gets near enough, the PKB will strike, hauling their prey up with arms, rolling over on them, dropping on them, folding them up from beneath, whatever is easiest. Once it's got a hold on its prey, the PKB will use its great strength and shifting form to constrict it, then form around it, release digestive juices, and everything is good. Well, for the PKB.

PKBs will attack if noticed, as well, just in case. Meals aren't easy to come by in the Underworld, and it is almost impossible to see tell a PKB from the landscape unless you are close enough for it to attack.

BIG HUG
When you are being attacked by a PKB, face Violence.
On a Hit, you are in its clutches, but not fully. You can engage or escape from the PKB as you see fit.
On a Hard Hit, the PKB misjudges, giving you the chance to inflict whatever Harm you can on it.
On a Miss, the PKB grabs you and starts squeezing. Suffer Harm as stated.

Only Wanting Contact
It's possible, for a PKB to unravel its body to about the thickness of yarn, though it's very rare to see one do so. The averarge adult PKB masses about 500 kilograms, and trying to describe it's dimensions any other way is kind of stupid. PKBs seem to enjoy hunting from water. Though they are not aquatic, they can breathe through any part of their body, and don't seem to have a minimum required surface area for respiration.

PKBs are not sunlight tolerant. Rather dramatically not sunlight tolerant. They burst. It's not pretty.

Ruhk blacksmiths know how to use the minerals you can glean off the skin of a PKB to alloy into a steel that shifts weight and form depending on how it's moving, making for very interesting weapons, which are amazing in the hands of trained users and almost impossible for the untrained to even hold for long.