Gambado

Folk call them springing skulls of doom. A gambado is man-sized and pale gray, often smeared with clay from digging, with a muscular human torso and three-clawed hands. What looks like its head is a scavenged skull fitted over its real one, hermit-crab style, held by special muscles that also work the jaw. Plains gambados like horned or tusked animal skulls; underground ones use humanoid skulls. Below the waist it narrows into a 3-foot spring of muscle and cartilage ending in three flat, retractable claw-toes that grip well and allow sudden turns. It travels by bounding, at 12 horizontally, and can leap high enough to touch a 14-foot ceiling.

It digs a pit about 6 feet deep and waits with its leg compressed and its skull at ground level, poking through a hole in a lid of rubbish, wood, stone and bones. The lid will not bear anything heavier than a rat and does not slow the strike. If anything alive steps within 4 feet of the seemingly abandoned skull, the gambado bursts out and bites with it for 1d8, then adds two claws at 1d4 each. It flees rather than die.

Gambados are amoral, caring only for survival, food and treasure. From a kill they take only coins, gems and small jewelry, which they obsessively sort by color and kind, handle and hold up to the light before sorting again. Most goes into the pit, but some is left scattered as bait. The creature eats its victim, rebuilds the lid and settles in to digest; it can go months between big meals, but at least every 10 days it digs out the hoard to admire.

They are not always solitary. A good hunting site draws a gambado's family, and up to eight pits may cluster together. A faint drumming on the ground from their legs may be how they talk, or just exercise during long waits.

The stretchy hide of the leg is used to join pipes and for similar fittings. Someone who recognizes a lair can use it to cover a party's rear against dimmer wandering monsters.