Marl

A marl is a giant water snake with a cobra's hood. Along its body grow 1d6+2 arms, each roughly a yard long, with a human hand at the tip. Most are brown with white bellies, though those from lush swamps often have green blotches. The arms share those colors and wear a coat of tiny scales.

Hugely strong and aggressive, a marl floats motionless until prey drifts close, then lunges with surprise. Birds are the exception: the sight of any bird sends it into a frenzy, and it attacks recklessly, ignoring morale, until every bird in view is dead or it is.

It never bites, punching with its fists instead, sometimes swinging clubs or weapons taken from earlier kills. Employers often give marl mercenaries good weapons. Untrained marls ignore bows and thrown weapons, though a patient teacher can change that. Its great strength adds +4 damage to every melee attack, armed or not. It can fight several enemies along its length at once, and its flexible body whips around to bring extra arms against foes bunched near its head.

To constrict, it first grabs a foe with at least one hand, a normal attack roll that deals no damage, then needs a second successful roll that round to wrap its coils around the victim. The squeeze deals 6d6 per round until the victim escapes or dies; breaking free takes a bend bars/lift gates roll at -20%. While first taking hold it can do nothing else that round, but afterward it may turn most or all of its arms on other foes within reach.

Marls are immune to mental and psionic attacks and to all charms, and ESP and similar spells reveal nothing.

Sometimes called slime devils, marls live in swamps and along rivers and usually speak their region's common language. They gladly hire out as guards and mercenaries, especially to snakelike masters such as vasshari or ophidians, taking pay in food and shiny trinkets. Wild ones are loners with no culture, building and crafting nothing and meeting only to mate; they live for hunting and basking. Yet they learn quickly, and some raised in other cultures show real artistic gifts, such as painting.

They mate in late winter and lay eggs about three months later, which hatch five months after that into two-foot, cobra-like young. These grow fast for two years, sprouting arms after the first. A marl may live 20 years.

Water birds are their main prey, though mammals up to human size are also fair game. Some say vasshari sorcerers created them, while other sages claim they came from a distant plane wholly without magic.