Corpse Creeper

Picture a huge green cutworm with a squid's head. Eight thin, writhing tentacles sprout from a head armored in tough hide (AC 3), while the soft body behind it is only AC 7. A foul reek usually announces it before it appears. Some deranged wizard's breeding experiments may well be to blame for it.

Clawed feet let it scurry along walls and ceilings at speed. It always lashes out with all eight 2-foot tentacles, whose sticky coating paralyzes for 2-12 turns unless the victim saves vs. paralyzation, then kills the helpless with a 1-2 point bite. Mindless, it keeps fighting while any foe can still move, and several creepers in one fight act independently, each trying to paralyze as many victims as it can. It hunts chiefly by sight and smell, so a clever illusion fooling both senses can buy time to escape.

Feared throughout the underworld, these creatures keep lairs and range out for food every few days. Goblins and trolls sometimes leave enemy corpses in chosen spots to keep the beasts busy far from home, in effect setting them to patrol, and some orcs chain live prisoners outside a lair.

A pair or a group of up to 6 may share a den, but they never hunt together; they compete fiercely and often fight, sometimes fatally, over a kill. Once a year they mate. A few days later the female seeks a large carcass or kill and lays about 100 eggs in it; the grubs hatch a week later and start eating. She abandons them, may devour some eggs herself, and dies within weeks, worn out. Males die soon after, having mated as widely as they could. Grubs cannibalize one another and are a favorite food of adults, but survivors reach full size within a year and begin the cycle again. With no more intellect than an earthworm, a creeper wants only food and offspring and cares nothing for treasure.

Like jackals, vultures, and crows, it cleans up the dead and culls the weak, sick, and careless, which strengthens prey populations over time and thins out crowded caverns. Its fortunes rise and fall with those of its prey.