Iron Turtle

Type

Animal

Base HD

2

Terror

-2

A curious and somewhat uncommon snail-like creature which is neither a turtle nor made of iron, the iron turtle is nonetheless just what it sounds like and is nearly indestructible despite its relatively small size. The iron turtle has a strange shell which resembles a cone atop a flat dome, like a dunce cap that has been nailed to a turtle shell, and its fleshy body emerges from one of four holes to feed and explore. The body resembles the head of a turtle except it has four eyes instead of two. The iron turtle has extraordinary senses, and is capable of sensing danger no matter what form it takes. In addition it retreats from blows before they are even made, and so the iron turtle is generally considered to somehow have limited knowledge of the future, though it’s not clear if this is actually true. The creature is extremely simple however, and even if it has foreknowledge of future events it does not seem capable of using this extraordinary ability to do anything but avoid harm.

The whorled and patterned shell of an iron turtle is harder than steel and repels sledgehammer blows from strong men with no difficulty. More than one man trying too hard to show off has broken his sledgehammer trying to crush an iron turtle. Because the shell is so incredibly hard it is also difficult to work with, though many armoursmiths have tried. However, wise armoursmiths do not try to make armour from an iron turtle’s shell, because even if they could manage to work it, the resulting armour would be too heavy to wear unless the shell were made impossibly thin. An iron turtle is no larger than a dinner plate and its shell is no thicker than a man’s thumb, but the creature weighs more than an adult man, and almost all of that weight is the shell. No two iron turtles have shells with alike patterns. The shell of an iron turtle rots when the inhabitant is dead and it is not know why the shell does not rot while the inhabitant lives.

Iron turtles appear to eat mud, especially mud from riverbeds or tidepools, though surely it must be feeding upon worms or detritus trapped in that mud. It is sometimes thought that the turtle might instead be looking for minerals with which to strengthen its shell; however since the shell is not obviously made of any common mineral or metal, this seems unlikely to be the case. Iron turtles do not have legs and move by sucking in water and expelling them from one of the holes in their shell, which somehow generates enough force to move them. Iron turtles prefer to live underwater but can survive indefinitely on land, and can also glide seemingly without any source of propulsion while on land. Neither form of movement is very fast. They are preyed upon by certain worms and eels, and birds with long beaks can reach into the shell and pluck the fleshy inhabitant out, as its only defence is to retreat into its shell and wait enemies out. Iron turtles can also be cooked in their shell, as the hardness of their shell does not protect them from flames.