[To go with last week’s hocus, have a pocus. Again, all credit for the concept and the art go to @bogleech]
Pocus
This immense iron cauldron sprouts eyes and a pair
of booted feet. Its bowl begins to snap open and shut like a lipless, ravenous
mouth.
The bizarre creatures
known as pocuses are, like their more common relative the mimic, ambush
predators capable of concealing their forms as an array of inanimate objects.
Pocuses, however, are specialists, and vastly prefer the taste and magical
energies provided by consuming spellcasting creatures. Even though a pocus is
incapable of assuming the array of forms that a mimic is, they can supplement
their disguises with illusions tailored to lure the curious and foolish to
their deaths.
A pocus can extract the
magic out of those they consume, which has a wide array of bizarre, hazardous
and even comical effects during the digestion process. Once a magical creature
is fully digested, a pocus can excrete a portion of the essence of its meal
into a potion to enhance its abilities at a later date. These potions are
enough to tempt unscrupulous witches, hags and other creatures into
“domesticating” pocuses for use as potion factories—these exploiters must tread
carefully and feed their pocus well, lest they end up as the next meal.
Pocuses are fantastically
patient and capable of surviving for years between feedings, although they
happily will eat more frequently if they can. This patience extends to their
personalities, which tend towards the laconic and moderate. Incapable of
speech, they converse by spelling words or making pictograms on their surfaces
using their shapechanging abilities. They enjoy the company of hocuses, and may
associate with a whole flock of the tittering aberrations.
A pocus possesses roughly
a five foot cubical volume and weighs about 1000 pounds.
Shores of Swords 