"Right there!" he said again, conjuring a glowing pink hand over the molten rock, one finger pointing straight down at the place where the mystery object had breached.
"There's nothing there," said Felten, the expedition's official artist.
"Of course there's nothing there now, but there was!"
"So what are we-" he broke off as the crystaline mound broke the surface again, twenty yards to the left."
"Get it! Getitgetitgetit!"
Gerias, the designated trapper, wove a quick spell, and the thing in the lava was pulled up as if by invisible threads until it hovered five feet or so above the lava's surface. Globs of molten rock ran in slow-motion rivulets down the squirming creature's body, dripping off like thick molasses. When most of the thing's body was free of lava, Gerias encased it in a transparent sphere of force and drew it over to hover in the middle of their makeshift camp. The few straggling drops of lava made a little pool at the bottom of the sphere.
It was Teleon's second research expedition to the Elemental Plane of Fire. His study of the fauna here in the previously ill-documented Black Rock Chaos would make him rich and famous if all went well. So far, he had made contact with a small tribe of azers, observed a subspecies of salamander native to the Chaos, and run afoul of a swarming elemental force he dubbed 'flame sprites'. This creature, though, was entirely unlike anything he had yet read of. Its body was a semi-flattened ovoid with an equatorial ridge, tapering slightly toward the anterior. It seemed covered with a thick, rocky carapace from which protruded glowing orange crystals. Three sets of stiff paddle-like flippers made futile circling motions, searching for purchase, as the beast hung suspended in mid-air. Three chitinous plates at the front served as jaws for a triangular mouth lined with thick, spiky teeth.
Teleon was furiously taking notes in his field journal. "Are you getting all this, Felten?"
The expedition's artist was in a panic. "Umm..." The edges of his sheets of parchment were blackened and curling inwards. "I think I wasn't holding my sketching pages when you cast that protection spell on us."
"Oh figs!" Teleon ripped three pages out of the back of his field journal and thrust them at the artist. "Get drawing!"
"Um, Teleon?" This time it was Gerias, looking worriedly at the sphere of force. The beast was spewing a stream of lava out of its mouth, rapidly filling the force sphere. The molten rock hardened into a black shell on the interior surface of the sphere, obscuring their view of the creature.
Teleon sighed. "Release it, then recapture it. We can't lose this thing!"
Gerias dismissed the capture spells and the semisphere of lava collapsed onto the shelf of pitted black rock. Another jet of lava spewed forth from the creature's mouth, coating Gerias in molten rock. The trapper screamed and fell to the ground, pawing at the patches of sizzling lava clinging to his flesh as the expedition's cleric ran over to aid him. The lava creature glowed brighter, steam venting from its bony plates, then burrowed into the black rock, disappearing from sight.
Teleon swore quietly to himself.
Today's Monster Monday is magmachelon, a turtle-like creature that swims through magma and solid rock and shoots jets of lava out of its mouth.
I made this creature years ago in the game Spore (pictured above), because that game's creature creator was far more entertaining that the actual gameplay. The idea of this lava turtle creature stuck in my head, and now here it is statted up for Pathfinder!
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.
