Lesser Cetus

The cetus is a heavy-bodied serpent with a head somewhere between a snake's and a hound's, from which jut two 10-foot ivory tusks. Dark red and blue-green bands ring its body, and a blood-red crest tops its head, matched by a pair of small, useless fins near the front. Its scales fit so tightly they look like a suit of full plate.

It can gore with its tusks or lash with its tail, each for 4-24 hp, but it is so huge and awkward that it can make only one of these attacks per round, even if foes stand at both ends. On a successful attack roll of 18 or more, it can swallow a creature of Size L or smaller whole. The gulp itself does no harm, but the victim takes 1-6 hp per round from digestive juices afterward, and since cutting open even a dead cetus can take 10 rounds, rescue is unlikely. Besides its armor, the lesser cetus is immune to petrification.

Ceti are loners except for brief meetings in mating season. A female lays 1-4 eggs and then deserts them, burying them 50 feet deep in sand on the loneliest, emptiest shores for safety. The eggs hatch in 6 months.

Like a true dragon, a cetus can eat anything, rock included, which leaves it without a balanced niche in the sea. Its only foes are dragon turtles and other sea dragons, the biggest giant sharks and whales, an occasional kraken, and daring adventurers. Giant crocodiles, giant sea turtles, and aquatic dragons dig up cetus eggs whenever they can find them.

When safe nesting beaches run short, usually because humans, demihumans, or humanoids have built along the shore, or because adventurers or local rulers have hunted out the eggs, ceti become a force of destruction. With the species' future at risk, ceti from everywhere instinctively converge on whichever settled area lies farthest from civilization's great centers and use their immense power to make sure no one lives there anymore. They prefer an island, or failing that a peninsula, ideally one whose only link to the mainland is a slender isthmus they can easily seal. They strike from every side at once, using sheer numbers to encircle the target and overcome their slowness.

Each tusk is worth 4,000 gp, both for its size and because it is magical. The ivory can be used to make any ivory magic item, such as the cubes needed for a cube of force or a cube of frost resistance, or Ivory Goats figurines of wondrous power. The hide can be worked into armor that performs as field plate +1 or full plate +1.