Black Pudding

Black Puddings of Grizburg

 

Appearance

The black puddings of Grizburg are vast, tar-slick horrors that drip like liquid night from ceilings and walls. Their surfaces seethe with glowing pustules of acid, bubbling with eerie green and violet luminescence. They are never still—oozing, rippling, and stretching pseudopods tipped with dissolving slime that devours whatever they touch.   ---

Origins

In Grizburg, black puddings are thought to be born of industrial corruption. Alchemical waste dumped into the Sko seeps into the Depths, fusing with divine rot from Zothra-Khaar’s remains. Some whisper they were once people—workers consumed by vats of acid, their souls boiling into hunger. Whether forged by foul magic or by the city’s own negligence, they now spread like a disease.   ---  

Habitat

They cling to the caverns of the Whispering Depths, rusting chains and bones half-dissolved in their bulk. Aboveground, puddings sometimes rise in Rustwater foundries, seeping out of drains as if drawn to heat and flesh. Miners fear them most, for shafts collapse when the oozes melt through stone in their endless hunger.   ---  

Ecology

Black puddings dissolve anything—flesh, metal, stone, or bone. In a minute they can eat through steel doors, leaving nothing but smoking sludge. Unlike other predators, they do not merely kill but unmake. The tunnels they infest are streaked with corrosion, scarred walls marked by trails of acid that glow faintly in the dark.   ---  

Behavior

They hunt silently, creeping along ceilings to fall upon prey. When struck with blade or lightning, they split, multiplying their threat. They do not flee, cannot be bargained with, and show no fear. They are hunger given form, patient enough to ooze in silence for weeks until prey stumbles near.   ---  

The Whispering Depths Connection

Cultists say black puddings are fragments of Zothra-Khaar’s corpse, divine entropy liquefied. Their glow is said to mirror the god’s ichor, each puddle a hymn to rot. Some believe they are sentient pieces of the Depths itself, fragments of a greater ooze still dreaming beneath Grizburg.   ---  

Use by Factions

The Rust Barons sometimes weaponize them, loosing puddings into rival vaults where steel and guards melt alike. Smugglers dump bodies into their mass to erase evidence. Whispered rumors claim a Baron once kept one chained in a pit, feeding it workers until it swelled beyond control and devoured its masters.   ---  

Cultural Role

To the poor of Rustwater, black puddings are the city’s hunger made flesh. They are called “Night Vats,” and children are warned not to wander into alleys when the fog glows faintly. Old superstitions claim if you dream of drowning in tar, the puddings have already marked you.   ---  

Legends

One tale tells of the Vat of Thane Korr, where an entire foundry was swallowed overnight. Another speaks of a pudding that carried the face of a tyrant half-submerged in its mass, screaming as it devoured a neighborhood. Whether myth or truth, puddings always carry with them stories of ruin.   ---  

Threats to the City

Their ability to dissolve steel threatens Grizburg’s very foundations. Bridges collapse, cisterns burst, and vaults disintegrate when puddings infest. If one of immense size emerged beneath Rustwater, whole districts might slide into the Depths. For now, the Barons conceal outbreaks, lest panic prove more corrosive than acid.   ---  

Behavioral Oddities

Some seem drawn to symbols, pooling beneath statues or shrines until the stone crumbles. Others drag bones into their mass, arranging them like jewelry within their shifting forms. The strangest glow with runes across their surface, as if remembering words written long before Grizburg’s founding.   ---  

Adventuring Hooks

• Rust Barons hire exterminators after a pudding breaches a vault. • A cult claims a glowing pudding is an oracle of Zothra-Khaar. • Whole workers vanish into sewers, their screams echoing but no bodies found. • In the Depths, an immense pudding is rumored to contain the remains of a fallen god.   ---  

Closing Words

Black puddings are entropy incarnate, patience made lethal, hunger given acid form. In Grizburg they are not simply monsters—they are the shadow of the city’s greed and negligence, consuming all without memory or mercy. See full stats on D&D Beyond