Khargra

Khargra move through earth the way fish move through water, riding the slow shifts of the stone. Some call them 'earth fish,' though that is about as fair as calling birds 'air fish.' An adult is a 3-4 foot cone tapering toward the tail. Around its front sit two eyes and three small sleeves housing thin arms that can reach 3 feet. Its foot-wide mouth, lined with small curved metal teeth, opens and closes like an iris, constantly grinding up rock, keeping what it needs and expelling the rest to push itself forward. A trained eye can spot its trail as threads of softened, churned stone winding through solid rock, but most people never notice.

Passing through stone, a khargra exists in a partly phased state. Unless victims can somehow sense it coming through the rock, they suffer -5 on surprise rolls. It attacks only creatures carrying refined metal or lots of valuable ore, usually travelers in the plane's rare air pockets and tunnels, leaping up to 10 feet out of the stone to strike.

All three arms attack, each as a 12-HD monster. The arms themselves cause no harm; their job is to grab, and the bite comes only after one lands. Seized victims are hauled toward its maw by surprising strength and bitten that same round unless they break free with a bend bars/lift gates roll. The stone-crushing mouth deals 3d6, and any bite roll of 16+ also ruins one metal item or weapon the victim holds, including one being swung at the khargra; nonmagical gear gets no saving throw. Witnesses claim to have seen one sever a fully armored knight at the waist.

Its speed, stony hide and semi-solid state make it hard to hurt, but this is natural toughness, not magical protection, so ordinary weapons work, and wise fighters keep enchanted metal blades out of its mouth. Heat and cold of any intensity do not bother it; some have even been seen swimming in the plane of Magma.

Lightning does full damage, and heat metal always deals maximum damage despite its fire immunity. Move earth stuns it for 1d3 rounds. Phase door cast on it as it moves from air back into stone kills it outright, as do stone to flesh and transmute metal to wood. Its eyes see through rock as easily as through air; whether it is blind outside stone is unproven.

Khargra are common on the elemental plane of Earth, rare on the plane of Minerals and almost never seen elsewhere. They drift contentedly through the rock in small schools, ignoring other creatures, though individuals sometimes wander off alone for a while.

Their life seems to have three stages, in keeping with the planes' fondness for threes: hatching, growing up and spawning on the plane of Earth, and at last traveling to the plane of Minerals, apparently as a final reward. What happens to them there is unknown, since far fewer are found there than seem to arrive. Some think their bodies turn into that plane's minerals, slowly carrying the best ores from one plane to the other; others say they gorge themselves to death. A popular theory holds that they are larval xorn and xaren that mature on the plane of Minerals and return to Earth, but despite similarities in diet and range, the evidence for this is thin.

Khargra eat high-grade ore but treat refined metal as a delicacy and may attack travelers carrying it. They have no interest in flesh, so a party that willingly hands over metal objects will not be attacked. Every dead khargra holds 1d6x100 gp in tiny bits of valuable minerals in its gullet.