Living steel

Living steel were highly adaptable creatures of pure brightly-reflective steel that fed on iron and lived in the vicinity of iron ore veins.

Description
Living steel usually took on a shape reminiscent of a humanoid made of shiny steel that moved with almost liquid grace.

Abilities
These metallic beings reflected light and light-based magics thrown at them, absorbed heat, and were immune to electricity. However, these immunities could be overcome by an immense amount of fire or electric damage done and needed to spend time reassembling their bodies together. Electricity simply traveled through living steel's conductive bodies, and fire liquified them, allowing them to change shapes much quicker than normal. The cold slowed the creatures down and immensely stifled their transformative abilities, making them venerable to normal weapons for two minutes.

Their bodies were completely unaffected by mundane and magic weapons weaker than +2 enchantments. When attacked with such implements of war, the weapons harmlessly slid off or through living steel bodies, leaving them unharmed and angry. Living steel bodies simply came back together where mundane weapons attempted to wound them.

When creatures with infravision observed a living steel specimen, they appeared as a simple cold blue lump of metal, making them extremely hard to notice in the underground habitats.

Their malleable, almost ooze-like bodies allowed living steel to fit in tight places and even move through tiny cracks in a wall.

Behavior
Living steel were usually non-aggressive but capable of ferocious and aggressive zeal if provoked. Living steel were known to pursue their offenders mercilessly until their targets or the creatures themselves were dead.

Combat
Living steel were able to change their bodies into any weapon or shape at will. Even not being able to change color, this ability gave them an upper hand in combat, pursuit, or evasion. When they needed speed, living steel could assume the shape of a swift hound; when they needed to defend themselves, they could transform into humanoids with giant axes or blades for hands. However, living steel could not fly in any of the shapes they assumed, nor gained sensory benefits or other qualities of creatures they transformed into. With that in mind, their shapeshifting abilities were only limited by their body mass.

It took living steel a bit of time to finish its transformation. During that time, the creatures were vulnerable to normal weapons. Because of that weakness, living steel avoided changing shape in the heat of battle.

Ecology
Living steel were solitary beings and formed no known society. They inhabited subterranean locations rich with iron - the substance they consumed. Their lairs were usually only accessible via small cracks and crevices in the stone. Living steel reproduced asexually and were extremely aggressive towards each other, battling to the death when encountered in the wild. After such a deadly encounter, the winner living steel absorbed the looser, adding it to the body mass. When living steel were in their lairs, the creatures maintained their blob-like amorphous relaxed shape.

Living steel consumed iron, and most of it was burned off to sustain and nurture the creatures. At the end of each day, one small refined iron chunk was deposited by living steel in their lair. This mass was an immature embryonic living steel, and it became a fully functional creature after a year of daily iron refinement and deposits.

Relationships
Living steel were known to serve several Torilian deities, such as Helm, Hoar, and Clangeddin Silverbeard.