Medusa

A medusa has the pale, shapely build of a woman between five and six feet in height, her crown of living snakes adding as much as a foot more. Beyond 30 feet she passes for an ordinary woman; closer, her red-glowing eyes show, and by 20 feet the hideous face and writhing serpents are plain. She dresses in loose robes, rarely wears armor, cannot easily wear a helmet, and may carry a short bow or a blade. She speaks her own language and the common tongue.

Hiding in shadow and using her figure to draw men in, she waits until she is within 30 feet, then shows her eyes; any creature in range that meets them must save vs. petrification or become stone. Foes who avert their eyes face her snakes, which bite at a 1-foot reach; the bitten must save vs. poison or die. If these tactics fail, she uses knives and short bows.

She sees into the Astral and Ethereal planes, and her gaze petrifies there too. It survives her death: viewing a freshly severed head calls for a save at +1, improving by 1 per day of decay.

Medusae lair in dark caverns or the lowest levels of big ruined buildings, lit for flickering shadow. To avoid betraying herself, a medusa removes most statues, keeping the attractive ones and smashing the rest beyond restoring. No mirror is ever in her hoard, since seeing her reflection in one petrifies her, though water or polished stone does not. Another medusa's gaze cannot affect her.

Occasionally a medusa mates with a humanoid male, who always dies, usually petrified. A month later she lays 2-6 eggs that hatch eight months on into revolting baby girls with stubby green tendrils. They grow like humans, gain live, venomous snakes at about two, and the gaze at adolescence.

One in ten is a greater medusa, with a scaly serpent body 10 to 20 feet long instead of legs. Saves against her venom suffer -1, she favors bows with poisoned arrows, and even touching her corpse demands a save vs. poison. She seldom leaves her lair and has +1 morale.