| Notes | During the Green Age, some of the power of Grower, the ancient force of life spread into the solid rock and infected it. The result was the parenlings, living, breeding organisms made from inorganic metal. The mostali regard these creatures as foul abominations; intrusions of horrible life-force into their stable realm. Trolls, voralans and other subterranean beings generally ignore them, or else trap them to harvest their metal.
A parenling appears as an elongated blob of pure metal, with tentacle-like pseudopodia extending from its body to serve as arms or legs. They have no eyes or other visible features, and seem to feel their way about by detecting vibrations and by sniffing out minerals with some unclassifiable sense. The most common parenlings are made from bronze, but lead, copper, tin and silver specimens are also known, and others rumoured. They graze on minerals in the rock, and are rarely encountered on the surface world; where they are it is only in the presence of bare rock, such as on high mountain peaks or plateaus. Parenlings can merge their body with solid rock, and flow through it, but they progress only at the agonisingly slow (to humans) rate of about one foot per minute. On a rocky surface, they can move freely, although they are still not particularly fast.
Organic beings have little parenlings could want, so that the creatures are more likely to flee than to stand and fight. However, their ability to flow through rock is too slow to allow an escape, so that they can be cornered, forcing them to strike out with their mace-like limbs at their tormentors.
They lay their eggs, cocooned in layers of tasty minerals, in deep concealed cracks and fissures, and as far away from dwarves or hungry trolls as possible. Dwarves will destroy parenlings on sight, given the opportunity. They are commonly found in packs of two to six individuals.
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