Fish [Forgotten Realms]

This saltwater fish is so transparent that all anyone sees is a 3-inch eye, milky white around a black pupil that seems to throw off tiny sparks every few seconds. Within 30 feet, anyone who meets its stare must save vs. paralyzation or hang motionless, hypnotized. Very fast but feeble, it could scarcely harm a man-sized foe, and it eats mostly brine and plankton. Schools of twelve or fewer hunt small prey and will even eat their own abandoned young.

Sharks, piranhas and manta rays have learned to trail these schools without meeting their gaze, killing large prey the eyes freeze and leaving the scraps, so nearly every school has an escort. Captive eyes make clumsy weapons and lose their power at death.

Hetfish, or hotfish, are lumpy, boil-covered silver-and-orange fish 1 to 3 feet long, built like toothless piranhas, living anywhere from polar seas to scalding springs, fresh or salt. Their bodies top 350 degrees Fahrenheit and wrap them in steam, which they apparently breathe, since water does them no good. Each has 1 HD per foot of length. If their coral den is disturbed, the whole community rams the intruder for 1 point per fish, and anyone swimming within 20 feet of the den takes 2 points a round from the heat alone. They claim 50 feet of radius per fish and treat anything entering as prey.

Dog-smart and fond of shiny things, they keep one 10 gp gem per fish in the den. Some have learned to ram ships for their treasures, dealing a point of hull damage each round for every 15 HD of attackers. Tritons hunt them as a hazard, and sages pay 10d10 gp for live ones, curious about heat so like a remorhaz's.

A slow, rust-red, wormlike reef fish longer than a man is tall, the masher crushes and eats coral. Its pair of vivid blue ridges along the back each carry two to four poison spines four feet or longer. It is not aggressive but startles easily and, when threatened, flares those ridges; an attacker needs a thrusting weapon whose point reaches six feet or more past the hand, or is struck. A spine victim who fails a save vs. poison dies after one turn, while a success means no harm. Rumors of a safe angle are false; it rolls and twists too quickly. Only neutralize poison or similar magic counters its venom, which is why people sometimes hunt it.

The biggest of all fish looks like a monstrous catfish covered in thick, slimy scales, its jaws crowded with long needle teeth, yellow on the belly and brown to mottled green above. Broad and flat, it can lie on the bottom or swim fairly shallow rivers, and it eats two tons of meat a day.

Its bony head is AC 3 and its body AC 8. Any hit swallows a foe shorter than 12 feet, and it targets those striking its head before those at its sides. A swallowed victim takes 3d8+4, then 2d8 every round, and is dead and dissolving after six rounds no matter what; from inside the fish is AC 10. Edged weapons do only 1 point per blow against the slimy scales, and fire does half, except inside the mouth or body, where it gains +1 per die. A hungry verme can flip nearly any boat, and ships up to a small galley.

Vermes favor warm rivers, sometimes entering the sea, and swallow nearly anything, even water buffalo, so their bellies may hold metal. One can empty a river or swamp of life and has wrecked city-states just by hunting upstream. Its powdered dorsal scales supply ink for several dozen shield scrolls.