Hook Horror

This upright cave hunter looks like a cross between a man and a vulture, with hooks where its hands should be. It stands around nine feet tall and weighs nearly 350 pounds, armored in a tough, mottled gray exoskeleton like an insect's. Its forelimbs end in 12-inch hooks and its feet in three smaller hooks like sharp toes. The head is a vulture's, hooked beak included, with faceted eyes, and some think the creature is a distant relative of cockroaches or cave crickets. Humans and demihumans cannot smell it, though animals notice a dry, musty odor. Hook horrors talk by clicking and clacking the plates of their throats, a sound that echoes far through caves and that they also use, much as bats do, to judge distances and cavern sizes.

Their hearing is so sharp that they are surprised only on a 1. They know their territory intimately and ambush travelers and cave dwellers. Each round they swing both hooks; if both connect, the beak hits automatically that round, and it keeps dealing 2d6 automatically each round until at least one hook is pulled free.

Their sight is wretched and normal light blinds them, so they hunt by ear and suffer no penalties from blindness or total darkness. Against silenced foes, however, they fight as others do when attacking blind. Hooks give them a superb grip on stone, letting them climb any surface short of sheer at normal speed, though their weight stops them from clinging to ceilings like insects.

Without hands, hook horrors cannot use tools or weapons and can only carry things in their beaks, which keeps their treasure meager. Clans live in caves and warrens, usually entered up a steep or vertical rock face, each family in a small cave off a central chamber, with eggs kept in the safest, most defensible spot. The eldest female rules but never fights; the eldest male, often her mate, leads all hunting and fighting as war chief.

Clan members squabble but seldom come to blows, and clans fight one another only over real disputes such as territory, rarely seeking to rule large areas or conquer rivals. Other creatures are mostly food to them, though they avoid strong parties and retreat from stronger groups. Their simple language has no words for debt or gratitude, and saving one's life earns no repayment.

Omnivores with a taste for meat, they eat nearly any cave fungus, lichen, plant or animal and are well suited to subterranean life. Few predators bother them, though anything that caught one would eat it. A hook horror's exoskeleton dries out and becomes too brittle to use within about a month.