Giant Crustacean

These are oddly mutated, oversized forms of two familiar animals: the giant crab of salt water and the giant crayfish of fresh water.

Apart from sheer size, a giant crab looks like any other crab, colored red, brown or gray under its heavy shell, scuttling sideways on its many legs. Its stalked eyes let it peer around corners and over ledges.

Perpetually hungry, it creeps up on prey, imposing a -3 penalty on the victim's surprise roll, then seizes it in pincers that deal 2d4 points of damage and tears it apart to eat. Once it has caught something edible it stops to feed unless attacked, and if challenged for its meal it tries to carry the food away, perhaps to its den.

Breathing both air and water and equally at home in either, giant crabs comb beaches for stranded fish and carrion and wade out after live prey. Some bury themselves in the sand by day and emerge at dawn and dusk, when the beach swarms with them and their tiny relatives, but others hunt at any hour. Driven purely by instinct, they will try almost any new food. They mate in autumn, each male seeking as many partners as possible, and females bury their eggs in sand to hatch the next spring; few young survive.

By clearing big carrion off the beach, giant crabs keep shorelines from rotting. Humans and demihumans hunt them for their excellent meat and their hard shells, which some craftsmen value for armor and shields.

The giant crayfish is basically a freshwater lobster, with a plated shell, many legs, eyes on stalks and two nasty pincers, colored mud brown or sand to match its riverbed. Some believe it, like the lobster, never stops growing, and certain sages argue it is simply an ordinary crayfish grown immensely old.

It waits motionless on the bottom, imposing a -2 penalty on its prey's surprise roll, then lunges to grab with pincers for 2d6 points of damage, preferring to haul its catch back to its lair to eat undisturbed. Its very tough shell gives it AC 4. Living only on the floors of deep, broad rivers, it threatens adventurers only if they swim along the bottom within its reach.

It feeds almost entirely on bottom fish, easily taking sturgeon, carp and large eels, and hunts almost constantly, which puts it in competition with river fishermen. Far from the top of its food chain, it is prized as a delicacy, which may explain its rarity: nixies love its meat, and its many hunters include storm giants, merrows, giant otters, giant pike, gar, dragon turtles and giant snapping turtles.