Mimics

Not every chest is a chest. Now and then a coffer, a hutch, or a strongbox standing on the floor is a mimic: a thing that sits in the dark looking like a chest until something touches it, and grows bigger the longer it sits. It looks exactly like a real chest of its kind, both in sight and in memory, and look mode describes it in the same words.

Each chest laid on a floor has a small chance, set by its band, of being a mimic. There is never one in a sanctuary, which creatures shun.

A mimic is always of the floor’s level, as a chest is, and is named by the same ten bands. A mimicling passes for a coffer, a young mimic for a chest, and an eldest mimic for a gilded ark. It carries exactly what the chest would have held, and drops it all, whole, when it dies. Nothing in it is ever smashed or burnt.

Spotting a mimic

A mimic does nothing until it is found out. It never moves, never wakes on its own, and no other creature takes any notice of it. It is found out when:

• You touch it. Walking into it, opening it, kicking it, or picking its lock all count. It lurches (“The coffer lurches: it is a young mimic!”) and strikes you at once with a free blow that may hold you fast. Your action is not done and takes no time, so the next move is yours.
• You cast Knock on it. It lurches, but no blow comes. The mana is spent.
• Anything strikes it: a blow, an arrow or a thrown dagger (which stop at it), a fireball, or a trap’s burst (“The coffer shudders: it is a young mimic!”).
• You find it by searching. It is a hidden thing like a secret door, with a difficulty of 12 + level ÷ 5, plus the branch’s addition per depth. You notice it in passing only if you notice everything (trained in Spot, or an elf). “You notice the coffer breathing: a young mimic!”

Until it is found out it has seen no one, so a thief’s sneak attack lands on it. Once found out it is an ordinary hostile creature of the vermin, and it never disguises itself again. It is slow (speed 800), so you can walk away from it.

Talents

• Chest-wise (delver; Intelligence 11 or Detect traps 15): within two cells you see a mimic for what it is. It shows as itself, not as a chest. It is still disguised, though: it waits, unaware, until something finds it out. A mimic’s grip also never holds you.

The bands

Each row is the band’s first level; every level from 1 to 60 has its own type on the same formulas (Strength 11 + 0.4 × level, Toughness 17 + 0.4 × level, Dexterity 10 + level ÷ 4, Willpower 16 + 0.35 × level, rounded down; hit points 5 × level beyond Toughness; the slam one step up the dice ladder from the level’s). The first five levels are softer: Toughness and the hit points beyond it are 40 % of the formulas’ at level 1, 55 % at level 2, 70 % at level 3, 80 % at level 4, and 90 % at level 5, rounded. Every mimic: faction vermin, speed 800 (slow), sight 6 cells in the dark, hearing 60, intelligence and presence 2, never sleeps or is poisoned; its slam holds you by the chance shown (Strength against the grip to break free), and its woody hide’s Protection is (level − 10) ÷ 8, rounded down (none below level 18). Experience by the guideline.

See also: Chests, Animated objects, and Creatures.