Nuckalavee

Built like a centaur with a swollen, monstrous head, the nuckalavee has transparent skin that displays everything underneath: pale ropy muscle, black blood pumping through orange and yellow vessels, and pulsing organs. A stench of rot hangs so thick around it that onlookers can taste it. It speaks Common and a guttural native tongue full of clicks and wet slurping, and it converses freely with every kind of undead.

Its very existence offends life. Without effort or choice, it kills all normal insects and tiny animals of 2 hit points or less, such as squirrels, rabbits and small birds, within 120 feet. Familiars survive but feel sick nearby.

It also exudes fear for 50 feet: anyone entering saves vs. paralysis or flees for 2d6 rounds. A success protects that creature, but it must save again whenever a companion is slain by the nuckalavee, since such deaths are gruesome to witness.

Every third round it can breathe a cone of cold 60 feet long that widens to 10 feet, dealing 6d6 (save vs. breath weapon for half). In melee it rakes with two claws for 3d8 each. Some can cast spells, ranging from 2nd-level cleric to 1st- through 4th-level wizard.

It has 20% magic resistance, immunity to fire and poison, and regains 3 hit points every round until killed. It cannot cross flowing fresh water. Mindless undead leave it alone unless directed otherwise, and intelligent undead are generally friendly with it.

Solitary by nature, nuckalavee pair up once every five years only long enough to conceive, then part. Each birth produces 1d3 foals that look like translucent, misshapen centaur colts with gills and goggling eyes. They mature in five weeks, and while they cannot use claws or breath until then, they already radiate fear.

Their lairs are great cages of victims' bones built just offshore in seas or salt lakes, their tops barely breaking the surface.

Some sages claim they are corrupted centaurs who fled to the sea. Many centaur elders call them twisted parodies made by some mad power, while others, and many sages, say any resemblance is pure coincidence.

Druids and good creatures hunt them as a menace to the land. They eat living flesh, but they kill animals and birds simply for the pleasure of it, as careless of nature as centaurs are careful.