Black Silt Horror

No silt horror is smaller or more often met than this one, a dusty black creature like an octopus or squid with eight writhing, barbed tentacles. Its kinship to the larger horrors is obvious at a glance.

Black horrors hunt as a team. Part of the group, the clutch, burrows in ambush while the rest jet after the prey and chase it toward them; if the trap works, the victims suffer -2 on surprise, and if not, the hidden members burst out and join the chase.

All its tentacles together make a single attack (individually they are too weak to matter) that deals 1d8 as they try to wrap and immobilize the target. Any round the tentacles hit, the horror may also bite for 1d4, injecting venom that paralyzes for 3d4 rounds unless the target saves vs. poison. On a natural 20 with the tentacles, the victim is entwined with one to four limbs pinned, and thereafter takes tentacle damage automatically each round and faces a bite attempt. The horror lets go if reduced to 8 hp or fewer.

Its tentacles are AC 6 with 4 hp each, and it flees after losing more than five. As it escapes, its air jet throws up a dense dust cloud; anyone caught in it who fails a save vs. breath weapon is blinded and wracked by coughing and choking for 1d4 rounds.

Clutches roam the silt sea and many smaller basins, aggressively pursuing anything they can catch; big clutches have even gone after giants wading the silt and the huge white horrors. Females rule, and the largest, the clutch leader, develops basic psionics to help catch prey: life detection, id insinuation, ego whip, contact, attraction, mind link, feel light, feel sound, and precognition.

Every year the black horrors of the silt sea return to their birthplace for a two-week mating ritual, then split back into clutches and go home.

Many sages of the desert world think the horrors descend from an ancient water creature, pointing to fossil impressions in rock of animals strikingly like them. Black horrors are voracious, keep eating even after a big meal, and regard anything they can run down as food. Silt runners are their favorite.