Blue-Ring Octopus

Hundreds of small blue rings speckle this octopus. Its eyes are big and golden, its beak a muddy green-brown, and its skin can shift at will from dusky gray-brown to a dingy white.

A blue-ring would rather vanish than fight. It recolors itself instantly to match the seabed, and its chromatophores even mask it from infravision and ultravision. If found anyway, it lets a foe drift to about 10 feet, then squirts milky, venomous ink that fills a 20-foot-radius sphere and jets off to new cover. The toxin harms only creatures breathing water through gills or by magic such as water breathing: each saves vs. poison or takes 4d6 damage and is blinded for 1d6 turns.

Cornered, it fights skillfully and holds nothing back, using six constricting tentacles plus its beak. A tentacle hit on a humanoid grips a location rolled on 1d8: right leg (1), left leg (2), right arm (3), left arm (4), head, blinding the victim (5), or a body hold that leaves the limbs loose (6-8). Breaking one hold takes a successful Open Doors roll and the victim's whole round. Worse, the arms inject the same venom: each round held, the victim saves at -2 or suffers 4d6 damage. Several tentacles mean several saves, but poison damage applies only once per round.

Aboleth and brinekin capture blue-rings, treat them well and breed them as servants, and many spend their entire lives captive. Free octopi always seem to learn of such prisoners and come to free them, which has fueled guesses that the species is telepathic or magical, though nothing proves it.

Red shamans: a few hatchlings in each brood bear rings of dried-blood red. Pampered and fiercely guarded, they grow to 8 Hit Dice and can become priests of up to 8th level. Their venom deals half damage even on a successful save, but they have weak or no color-changing cells, so most spend their lives tucked deep in a rock cleft, fed and consulted by the tribe.

Blue-rings are peaceable nomads ranging from shallow water down to the deepest trenches. Through undersea passages some have reached cold surface oceans, where they ally with the locathah and the tool-using tako.