ECOLOGY

Environment any urban
Organization solitary, pair, or infestation (3–6)
Treasure double

Morgodeas are sinister syntheses of fey and vermin who lurk in the filthy underworlds of cities. Compelled to corrupt and debase, these disgusting creatures deal in a pleasure that can plunge their victims into the depths addiction and madness. Morgodeas appear as human or elven vagrants covered in dirty rags. These “rags” are actually layered flaps of hide the morgodea can open to reveal a brood of cockroaches crawling amid its waxy, yellow flesh. Large pores in its body constantly weep a pale, thick jelly that sustains its nest of vermin and inspires euphoric visions in humanoids.

In combat, a morgodea's cockroach brood erupts into a flesh-eating cloud to defend their master. The fey itself can extend a hidden chitinous pincer from its abdomen, and needle-like stings from the palm of each hand. It uses its massive claw to restrain victims while it injects them with its addictive venom again and again. A victim caught in this way is overwhelmed by the morgodea's drug-like poison, and the prey's consequent hallucinations render its attacker indistinguishable in the teeming mass of hissing, gel-smeared insects, even as the morgodea holds it in place. A morgodea stands 5 to 6 feet tall and weighs around 200 pounds.

Ecology

Morgodeas once cleaned filth and refuse from glittering cities. Some ancestral crime corrupted their entire bloodline, and saw their people banished to the Material Plane, where their bodies twisted and warped to mirror their foul, covetous hearts. They can eat any sort of rotting organic matter, but prefer the flesh of humanoid creatures rendered comatose by their addictive jelly. These awful monsters keep such victims alive as long as possible, carefully consuming only those parts of their victims' bodies that will not necessarily kill the prey. The addict's brain is the foremost delicacy, and saved for a final feast.

Morgodeas reproduce by inserting a single egg into a comatose addict. Within days, the egg develops into a larva, which burrows its way into the brain and consumes it, and then begins to merge with the brainless body.

Throughout this time, the parent keeps its young hidden away in a foul place, while the body emits a pheromone to attract cockroaches from the surrounding area to inhabit the corpse—laying eggs and multiplying by the hundreds—while feeding from the jelly produced by the growing larva. After 4 weeks, the body reawakens as an adult morgodea, already host to a large swarm of the insects and covered in porous, waxy flesh that weeps its own supply of morgod jelly.

Despite this transmutation, the victim's face remains recognizable, resulting in mistaken sightings of missing people. Occasionally, individuals searching for down-and-out friends and family members instead find themselves the monsters' latest victims.

Habitat and Society

Morgodeas are strongly attracted to sprawling urban areas, where they nestle against the dark underbelly of civilization. Such settlements must be large enough to provide a level of anonymity to their inhabitants.

Morgodeas' secret infestation of cities is like a foul disease creeping through the bloodstream to infect the vital organs of society. An infestation begins with a lone morgodea claiming a lair—often an abandoned building or sewer—and clearing the surrounding area of other predators before it begins selling the dubious pleasures of its jelly to the desperate and demented.

Soon thereafter, the monster's growing number of thralls secure its place in the underworld and bring it rotting meats and fruits, strong alcohols, and sugary sweets in payment. Eventually, those overwhelmed by addiction slip into a nightmare-filled coma before becoming a meal or a newborn morgodea.

A morgodea's nest slowly grows alongside its influence and stock of customers. A full infestation of morgodeas rarely contains more than five or six of the creatures, and even then, only the largest of cities and metropolises that can sustain such numbers without rapid detection of the nest. Morgodeas in excess of this number leave the nest to seek out new settlements to infest, or else are devoured by their own families long before they gestate from their larval states.