Haundar

The haundar is an enormous slug. A thick, flat, jointed shell covers most of its back and its head, and the rest of the body is wrapped in dense fur; shell and fur alike are white with a faint green sheen. Rich blubber keeps it warm, thickest beneath the heaviest part of the shell about 10 feet behind the head. Like ordinary slugs it has two retractable eyestalks and two lower feelers for sensing its way, with the mouth between the feelers, packed with shark-like, ever-growing teeth. It has infravision and can levitate, drifting slowly through the air, though not in a blizzard.

It mostly bites, for 2d8. It can also spit acid up to 12 feet; the attack roll need only hit AC 0, and the glob splashes everything within 10 feet of where it lands for 4d8, halved if the target makes a save vs. breath weapon. Anyone who fails must check whether the acid has damaged his gear.

The shell is AC 2 and the exposed body AC 6. The stalks are AC 8, and the slug snaps them in the instant they are attacked, keeping them withdrawn until the fight ends and fighting by smell at -3 to hit. Any single blow of 10 or more damage cuts off or disables a stalk or feeler. Without at least one eyestalk the haundar cannot travel or hunt, and without them it eventually starves; the lower feelers tell it its direction, height and speed in flight, and without at least one it cannot fly. Lost stalks grow back in a month.

Haundars den in big rock caverns, deep ice crevasses, or tunnels dug into the ice, where they sleep, shelter from storms and breed. Sometimes a lair links up with haun tunnels, and those worms commonly infest the slug. A haundar free of hauns migrates across the icy waste to stay within a narrow band of temperature, north in summer and south in winter, following bears, seals, moose and sometimes people.

Mating begins at the northern end of the journey, when food grows scarce. Each haundar is both male and female. It must fly almost nonstop for days, then returns to its lair, lays 4d4 eggs and falls dormant for weeks. The hatchlings eat their sleeping parent, so a haundar breeds successfully only once. On average two hatchlings reach adulthood and one of those reproduces. A well-fed youngster adds 1 HD, or 1½ feet, each year, and haundars live up to 60 years.

A haundar eats nearly anything it catches. It is rare because it is a staple of the sha'az, a single carcass feeding a whole hive for weeks. Its blubber renders into oil, potion makers want its eyestalks for infravision and its lower feelers are a potent ingredient for potions of levitation. Broken shell can be worked into plate armor pieces: a full suit weighs half as much as metal armor of equal protection, resists acid, and costs twice as much to make. Some northern knightly orders pay well for it.