Cloaker

Hanging still or lying folded, a cloaker looks like nothing more than a plain black cloak. The two lines of dark eye spots on its back pass for buttons, and a pair of ivory claws at its top edge resemble bone clasps.

The illusion ends when it spreads out. Its pale underside comes into view, along with a ghastly face: two glaring red eyes above a mouth crowded with needle teeth. A whiplike tail unrolls from its rear edge and twitches eagerly as it closes in.

A cloaker strikes in a sudden blur, launching itself at a target. On a successful attack roll it wraps the victim up completely. A wrapped creature is nearly helpless, and the cloaker bites it automatically each round for 1d4 plus the victim's unadjusted Armor Class, so a hero in chain mail (AC 5) takes 1d4+5. Shields do nothing against this.

While it feeds, its two tail-lashes deal 1d6 each to anyone trying a rescue. The tail has AC 1 and is lopped off after 16 points of damage. Blows aimed at the cloaker itself split evenly between the monster and its captive, and area spells like fireball hit both at full strength.

Instead of biting, the cloaker can moan, choosing one of four intensities each round. Stone and other dense matter blocks the sound, but in an open cavern it is deadly:

Unease: everyone within 80 feet suffers -2 on attacks and damage aimed at the monster, and anyone who hears six straight rounds of it falls into a trance, unable to fight or defend, for as long as the moaning lasts. Fear: as the spell, all within 30 feet must save vs. spell or run in terror for two rounds. Nausea: a cone stretching 30 feet out and spreading to 20 feet across; those who fail a save vs. poison are wracked by weakness and nausea and can do nothing at all for 1d4+1 rounds. Hold: works as hold person on a single target within 30 feet for five rounds. A neutralize poison spell cast on a victim ends any of these effects.

Cloakers can also bend shadows, using one trick at a time. Darkening the air around itself improves its AC to 1. Alternatively it can sculpt shadow decoys of itself, which function as a mirror image spell producing 1d4+2 images. Casting light directly on a cloaker blinds it and shuts down its shadow shifting.

Cloakers haunt deep, lightless places and are distant relatives of trappers. They usually murder anyone who blunders into their lairs, unless a crueler and more entertaining punishment occurs to them. Their minds work so differently from other beings that only wizards who have spent long hours schooling their thoughts in a special arcane discipline can hold any sort of conversation with them.

Sages suspect cloakers reproduce without sexes, but nobody has managed to prove it.