Smoking Lizard Media

A bad day for Supes fighting the Purple Wizzer…

© 2018 G.N. Jacobs

From the journals of Stephor the Seeker:

One night during a lull in the on-deck concert by the men and their instruments, my Number One, a fine man by the name of Edward Teach, told me of a beast so foul as to make our recent encounter with a Noir Easter seem like mere childhood terrors, like a first visit to a tooth puller, that fade with time. Ridiculous name or not, the Purple Wizzer (Edward’s name for it) is a deadly and foul abomination that isn’t ever to be taken lightly.

According to Edward, he was still Captain of his former vessel the Queen Anne’s Revenge. She always sounded like a fine vessel, even when put to her reputational nefarious uses as a pirate. But, since the story Edward told me figures in how I now can trust him as the single finest mariner I’ve ever seen, I suppose I can, as always, refrain from torturing my friend with his past.

Anyway, the tale he told while the strings and guitars argued about tuning put shivers to me that I didn’t think I still had. He sailed near Charleston at a time when the city fathers still debated the spelling whether the current one or the older Charlestown. A fat prize of the kind that always proves irresistible to salt dogs of his ilk appeared a little bit to the north.

The usual mundane aspects to reavers closing and boarding a fat merchantman transpired. None of the target crew appeared on deck. Only Edward gripped his blade with the appropriate force once he swung over to that heaving deck. A superstitious man of those superstitious times, my friend kept warning his men to greater alertness. Of course, from what he said next I doubt that tighter grips on sabers, epees and cutlasses would have helped.

The official history of my new favorite realm known as Earth records that Edward Teach, Blackbeard and last Captain of the Queen Anne’s Revenge merely opened the wrong wardrobe door in the officer’s quarters allowing a dashing naval officer to spring the ambush Scottish Claymore in hand. If true, a fitting end for unrepentant pirates. The truth was far stranger…

Edward recalled vividly poking his sword point between frame and door of that wardrobe. His hands shook telling me of his racing heartbeat and heavy breathing. A pirate bosun tripped and kicked over a spyglass. Edward shrugged once the rolling brass tube nestled against the bulkhead thinking that he’d used up the bad luck for everybody that day. He leaned in and twisted open the latch.

If the Royal Officer had actually been hiding with the coats, Edward wouldn’t have gone straight. He swears he was too sober and good to lose to just anyone. I have no reason to doubt my friend; he wins more deck fights than he loses. Even now, once we have switched over to Glocks this is still the case.

All Edward would say when asked to closely describe the beast was, “Fuck, Stepho, it was purple…I think!”

Editor’s note:

Stephor goes on to explain that his first officer threw up an arm and recoiled falling back to the deck. The purple whatever reached with sharp claws for the bosun that hadn’t moved as quickly. At which point, the monster ripped out the poor man’s throat. The monster wasn’t moving at full speed so Mister Teach did say that the beast appeared purple and mostly humanoid.

The monster took a moment to scoop flesh and blood into its mouth. It slurped like how Edward sometimes eats his soup. Then it threw a shoulder into a spin and sped off racing across the deck to fast to see except as a purple blur. This method of motion made a lot of noise much like the buzz of a pissed off beehive.

Edward Teach freely admits shitting his pants crawling away towards a bench along the bulkhead. A good man detailed to other sections of the boarding party entered the officer’s quarters, likely attempting to report. The Purple Wizzer vibrated back towards this new threat in order to rip off the pirate’s head and scoop out his brains. With each bite, the monster became more purplish in skin tone leading Mister Teach to speculate that the beast ate flesh and blood to keep up its proper healthy color. The monster casually tossed the remainder of the body aside to crash into the bench breaking it open to reveal the British officer history records as the slayer of Blackbeard.

The man had in fact set an ambush for successful pirate, but given his present state of bound and gagged he’d run afoul of the Purple Wizzer as well. The monster vibrated in one place for a moment considering which human to eat first. And then it sped out of the room to attack sailors from both crews in other parts of the ship. Screams rose up from the lower decks.

A wave of fear and a second shit in his pants caught up to Mister Teach as he freed the British gentleman from his ropes. Each successive scream for Mother, God and Sweetie broke the pirate a little further. He called upon the god Yahweh and his son Yeshua for deliverance promising an end to his wicked ways. The officer slapped his new comrade to focus his mind. Swords in hand the men ran to fight the monster deeper in the ship.

An end to hunger did more to stop the rampage. They cornered the beast in the hold among the salt pork. The officer emptied a brace of pistols trying to stop it from eating his ship’s cook, a portly man likely to taste good to a monster. The lead balls rocked the monster but had no permanent effect. Eating the extra fat increased the purple in the skin but also healed the superficial bullet wounds.

Seeing the tactical situation worsening, the Purple Wizzer batted aside Mister Teach and then slowed down long enough to be seen as an indistinct gray male figure much like many artist’s dolls, gray when hungry and purple when satiated. The beast grabbed its cock and proceeded to urinate a purple stream onto the British officer’s back.

The man screamed having been doused with fluids that mixed the effects of lye, kerosene and something that ignited on contact with the air. Mister Teach acted quickly to cut off the man’s wool coat before the fire burned through to the skin. The man had second-degree burns that would heal in time. The Purple Wizzer used the distraction among the men of both crews putting out the fire to dash to the taffrail and swan dive into the water for a swim to the Carolina Banks.

A calm spread about the deck of the decoy ship and the Revenge. The smell in Backbeard’s pants became more noticeable. A quick count of the survivors showed that the greater majority of the dead came from the pirate crew. Mister Teach offered his sword. The officer relented seeing the continuing fear on his erstwhile foe shook his head and let Blackbeard follow the beast over the rail for a swim after gaining his most binding promise to go straight. We can only assume that the officer grabbed a body from among the carnage and passed it off as the pirate in London.

In game terms, the Purple Wizzer is hungry, but also generally sentient enough to bash enemies over the head and tie them up for later eating or to ensure escape. Eating flesh and blood acts to replenish the specific version of hemoglobin among Purple Wizzers to change the skin from gray to purple. Flesh and blood consumed in this way also act as a healing agent that fuels the beast’s regenerative powers, but fat is the tastiest and most effective kind of flesh for this purpose. Thus the Purple Wizzer attacks fat people first.

The primary attack is the super-speed that enables the beast to hit and run eviscerating its food. The few times the base model subspecies stands still it may be stabbed or shot with normal weapons. Though if it is not killed quickly and treated like a hydra with continuous burning to the wounds to close them, the injuries will grow back making for a tough creature to kill.

The regeneration and blood drinking have led to debate as to being a member of the vampire family, but since the monster dies when

The Purple Wizzer also uses a foul stream of purple urine as a weapon of last resort. The stream is part lye for chemical burns and part flammable like kerosene or whale oil with a substance much like cesium to ignite it in air. There have been variations among the many individuals as to how much lye versus flammable pee is used and probably relates to the exact quality of the monster’s recent diet. We surmise cobalt oxide mixed with hemoglobin as the mechanism for the purple skin tone, but this has not been proven. The beast is believed to be solitary except for mating season and they are not friendly with each other at any other time.

Quantifying what the Purple Wizzer does to its prey has come at a high price, but generally speaking they have about 8HD, the ability to regenerate 1HP/round when eating normally or 3HP/round when eating lots of fat and skin as tough as leather armor. However, as wide variations, even among the base model, exist some parties will see the semi-rare version wearing armor captured from prey.

And the DM/GM is also allowed to tweak the monster by casting it into one of many subspecies with one extra ability: +4 magic to hit, vulnerable to silver or anything else the DM/GM thinks is right. With that, get a slayin’!