Malfera

A malfera has a wrinkled elephant's face with a stubby grasping trunk, two big fangs, and crescent ivory horns. Its chest is a slick mass of short tentacles like tube worms, and its long, brawny arms end in jagged pincers. Red veins web its black, leathery hide, and its eyes glow crimson.

It fights with pincers and fangs, gaining Strength 20 bonuses on the pincers. When both pincers strike one foe, the malfera pulls that victim into its chest the next round, where the tentacles hold it fast. Their acidic slime burns for 2d6 damage per round; a save vs. poison negates that round's damage. A captive with Strength 15 or less is stuck until the beast dies. With Strength 16 or more, the victim gets exactly one bend bars check to escape.

Its rancid breath acts as type J ingested poison with a 1d4-minute onset. Each successful bite demands a save vs. poison at +3; failure is fatal, and success still costs 20 hit points.

Acid and poisonous gas do nothing to it, and only magical or crimson steel weapons can hurt it. Invisible things are never hidden from it, and doors open for it as if it bore a permanent knock spell.

A malfera on the Prime Material works alone. It kills greedily and wastefully, often devouring just the heart of an intelligent humanoid and leaving the body to rot, though it keeps grisly trophies. It prefers steaming jungle, and orcs of a jungle peninsula on the frontier coast tell many legends of it.

Malferas come from a nightmare dimension where bad dreams are raised and sent into sleepers' minds. They reach the Prime Material only through powerful mortal magic or a god's will, and each must go home once its task is done. An evil mage can call one with a spell akin to the 5th-level conjure elemental; an evil priest uses a modified form of the 6th-level conjure fire elemental.

Oddly, malferas never attack the wallaras, a peaceful chameleon-like folk. Sages guess this is because wallaras are often watched over by powerful spirits of the dream realm, the same realm that spawns nightmares.