Great Orm [Sea Serpent]

At a distance the great orm looks like a plesiosaur: small head, swanlike neck, torpedo body with front paddles and a spade-shaped tail. Close up it is a horror. The eyeless head blends into the neck and the whole body ripples constantly, shifting shape as it swims. Witnesses call it wormy and creepy, a giant stomach trailing a writhing gut, or an enormous slug, and it leaves slime where it crosses land.

Use elasmosaurus statistics changed as follows: active at any time, 20 Hit Dice, THAC0 5, bite 3-30, size G (100 feet), 14,000 XP. Its warty skin oozes poison; bare-skinned contact requires a save vs. poison at -1 to avoid death. Hirelings may simply flee at first sight.

The model is Tullimonstrum, a few-inch Carboniferous worm described in 1966 that by convergent evolution resembled a tiny plesiosaur. One lake monster researcher argued that the famous Scottish loch creature and sea serpents generally are giant forms of it. A worm resting on the bottom would not show as a separate object on sonar, gills would spare it from surfacing, and a boneless carcass would leave nothing once it rotted. One old tale tells of an orm that died stuck in a crevice ashore and, locals swore, melted away.