Murkmaw [Unique Undead Serpent]

Murkmaw is one of a kind, an immense dead serpent haunting a single blood-tinted lake in a cursed, mist-bound domain. Her gray-green hide hangs like a zombie's, split open so pale bone shows through, and she reeks of rot. Her huge mouth bristles with needle teeth. Swimming on the surface, she shows only a head trailed by a line of humps.

She never leaves the water but attacks anything near the shore, often rising mid-lake, vanishing, then surfacing right beside the bank. Death has not stiffened her: coiled underwater, she can whip out in a serpent's strike that reaches 50 feet past the waterline or 60 feet into the air.

Her bite deals 3d8. A single bite of 8 or more means her jaws lock and she drags the victim to her lair, where it drowns unless a Strength check breaks free.

Up to three times daily she exhales a yellow vapor cloud, 20 feet high and wide by 40 feet long, with the effect of cloudkill as the 5th-level wizard spell. It drifts on the breeze and sinks into hollows for four rounds before fading. Losing a fight, she can invoke fear, as the 4th-level wizard spell, also three times daily; everyone within 100 feet must pass a fear check.

Priests turn her as a creature of 10 HD, and only +1 or better weapons can hit her.

Some witnesses insist they have seen two sets of humps at once, and a few say she guards a brood of young serpents, though how a dead thing could breed is anyone's guess. Her lair supposedly holds her victims' gear, but the lake is hundreds of feet deep, and any arms or armor brought up would likely be rusted ruin unless magically protected.

She has no natural lifespan and her corpse yields nothing useful, save a hide sturdy enough to cut into a shield or leather armor. Its stench forces the wearer to save vs. poison every hour or suffer nausea, -1 on attack rolls.