Echyan

An echyan is a worm about 12 feet long and 2 feet thick, narrowing to a flattened tail. A faint swelling marks the head, home to a tiny brain, and it has no visible eyes. Its translucent skin and flesh make it almost impossible to see underwater until it strikes. The mouth is a huge sucker ringed with three rows of crystal fangs for gripping and swallowing.

Echyans eat nearly anything, sensing prey by its movement and striking from below or behind. A hit means the worm has latched on, sucking blood and flesh and dealing automatic damage every round until the victim makes a bend bars roll to pry it off. A natural 18, 19 or 20 means it swallows a man-sized or smaller creature whole.

They attack one at a time. When the active worm has lost half its hit points it backs off and another takes its place, until every worm is wounded; then any that can swim away do so.

Echyans live in a western ocean and spawn each winter in the great rivers of a frontier coast, burrowing into the mud to lay eggs that hatch in spring. The newborn worms, already four feet long, swim to the sea and grow fast through the summer, trailing migrating fish and taking larger prey such as sea turtles, walruses and whales when they can. An enchanted river hosts thousands of them every winter, a safe haven because the worms are immune to the drowsy lotus blooms that choke it. Big predators gather at the spawning grounds to feed on the spent worms.

In fresh water they eat frog-folk, turtle-folk eggs and other river life; at sea they mostly eat fish, though a worm sometimes crawls onto a beach for the turtle-folk eggs it loves. Caught on land after sunrise, an echyan half-buries itself in sand to escape the burning sun.

Their near-invisibility and fierce bite make echyans among the most dangerous coastal predators, yet most people they kill are those unlucky enough to stumble onto a worm stranded on a beach in daylight. They have little value to anyone and are mostly left alone, though the dog-folk work to stop them from reaching the enchanted river each year.