Kraken [Al-Qadim]

These kraken are pale albino squid-like giants that can breathe both air and water. In ages past the race was far smaller and haunted the coastal shallows, served by human cultists who brought it offerings. Some natural upheaval, or perhaps a war against the forces of good, drove the survivors into the abyssal deep. Only a handful remain, but they have grown vast and mighty, and they now seek to slay good creatures and devour anything smaller than themselves.

A kraken's tentacles are AC 5 and its thick shell AC 0. Its head is AC -4, and anyone attacking the head takes a +2 initiative penalty for that round as it gets past the tentacles. Lost tentacles hurt but grow back within weeks. It swims forward at a sluggish 3 but jets backward at 21.

Of its 10 tentacles, it always uses two or more to anchor itself, and attacks with two barbed tentacles that rake and pull prey toward its huge beak, plus six others that grab and squeeze for 2d6 damage each round after the first. Escaping requires severing the tentacle with 16 points of damage from one blow of a sharp weapon. For each tentacle hit, roll 1d4: 1 pins the victim's left arm, 2 the right, 3 neither, and 4 both. Once three or more tentacles are cut off, the kraken flees at once, leaving an 80' x 80' x 120' cloud of poisonous ink that deals 1d6 damage per round with no save for 2-5 rounds until the sea dilutes it, while it jets back to its lair.

For a day at a time it can fill a sphere 130 feet across, or a hemisphere 260 feet across, with breathable airy water. At will it can create faerie fire lasting 8 hours and control temperature in a 400-foot radius for a day; it also uses control winds and weather summoning once a day each and animal summoning III (fish) three times a day.

Kraken love to sink ships. One can pull a vessel up to 60 feet long straight under, and it brings larger ships to a stop in five rounds. If six or more tentacles hold a ship for three straight rounds, the hull takes damage as if rammed, starts flooding, and loses enough buoyancy in 2d4 rounds for the kraken to haul it down easily. They hunt aggressively enough to beat even large sperm whales.

Kraken live alone except in the monsoon mating season, when they gather in the deepest ocean trenches to lay eggs that are left to hatch. Some keep air-filled cave complexes where they breed human slaves as servants and food, steering ships into the area with wind and weather to restock; such lairs hold treasure type A on top of the usual treasure. Ambitious kraken spare sahuagin or evil ray-folk of the deep in exchange for service and tribute, and use them to raid shipping and coastal cities.

Their prey includes whales, giant octopi and squid, and on occasion a young zaratan. They especially loathe aboleth as unnatural upstarts. Nothing hunts them in the normal course of things, though legend holds that rocs snatch young kraken basking at the surface and that marids hunt them for sport.