Bloodkiss Orb [Gazer Kin]

Also called the bleeder or, in older lore, the eye of terror, this cavern and ruin predator has the round body of a gazer tyrant, but what look like eyestalks are tentacles tipped with hooked, toothy suckers. The body has no mouth, and its central eye grants 120-foot infravision but no magic. Viewers take it for a gazer tyrant 90% of the time. It hunts anything with blood, preferring humans and horses and favoring easy targets like lone travelers and gorged stirges. A huge specimen called the Coiled Hunger is said to roam the forests and peaks of a northern coastline.

At rest the ten tentacles retract to stalk length, but they whip out to 20 feet in an instant, striking separately or together at one foe or a whole party. Each first hit deals 1-8 as the barbs latch on, then drains at least 2 hp of blood per round from the following round onward. It can also ram with its bulk for 1-8, often spinning with tentacles flailing to knock prey off ledges.

The body is AC 4, the eye AC 8 with 6 hp, the tentacles AC 6 and their tips AC 4. Striking a tip stuns that tentacle for 1-4 rounds. Severing one takes 6 points from an edged weapon. Prying one loose needs a combined 22 Strength, usually several people, and the ripping barbs deal the victim 1-6 damage for each tentacle removed. A damaged but surviving tentacle that is attached instantly pulls enough blood from its victim to return to 6 hp, at most twice per round, and only for damage to that tentacle. Without its eye, it finds creatures within 10 feet by smell and vibration.

When the body drops to 0, attached tentacles go on draining while loose ones go limp. The orb pulls back a feeding tentacle by choice only when its body is down to 5 hp or less, or once the victim is drained to 0.

Each hp of blood becomes 1 charge after a round, stored up to 24 per tentacle and 50 in the body. Moving burns a charge every two turns, so it hunts almost constantly. Every other round, alongside its other actions, it can spend a charge to heal 1 hp to every tentacle, the body and the eye (12 hp in all). Cut a tentacle off and there is a 70% chance its stored charges discharge into whatever touches it, 1 hp of electrical damage apiece.

It levitates and prefers floating over resting on surfaces. It can shut down and lie on the ground, motionless and senseless, for very long periods, waking only when an electrical surge, strong heat, or the shock of a blow, fall, wound or spell deals it 5 or more damage. Explorers who poke a 'helpless' sleeper usually wake it and become its meal unless they kill it first.

Proud and paranoid like the gazer tyrants, bleeders hunt alone, and two that meet often fight to the death in midair. The winner fills the loser's corpse with countless eggs in green fluid, and 1-4 young emerge within a day, each half the parent's size and hit points and full grown in a month. Victims' treasure lies in its cave or ruin, often laid out in a trail to lure more prey.

By preying on big creatures it checks magical beasts that have no other predators, and it fears little except dragons and other gazer kin. An organ in its upper body is prized for levitation potions and inks. A mage in a coastal city reportedly uses its eye to cure blindness, though the patient gains only infravision. A nerve node deep inside hardens on death into a soft, faceted red gem called a blood-eye, worth about 70 gp and loved as jewelry because it glows brighter as its wearer's feelings grow stronger.