Otyugh

Otyughs (pronounced aw-tee-ug), also called gulguthra or 'dung eaters,' squat in mounds of refuse. The bloated body has rocky brownish-gray hide caked with filth, and it rests on three thick legs that make it slow but let it spin in place. A leaflike stalk carries three darting eyes and also serves as the organ of its telepathy. A huge fanged mouth sits in the middle of the body, flanked by two ridged tentacles studded with thorny growths. The larger, cleverer neo-otyugh has a smaller mouth. Both reek of rot.

Hidden under offal with only their eyes showing, gulguthra attack when hungry for fresh meat or when they feel threatened. Each tentacle either smashes or seizes. A grabbed victim takes 2-4 damage per round and is bitten at +2. An otyugh pounds its captive into the ground; a neo-otyugh instead holds the victim up as a shield, improving its own AC by 1, and may give up the squeeze to make an attack roll against the captive's AC, forcing an attacker to strike its friend. Anyone with Strength 18 or more breaks free automatically after struggling one round; others need a successful open doors roll.

Their bites are 90% likely to pass on a disease, debilitating 80% of the time and fatal 20%. The creatures themselves are immune.

They talk in a mostly silent language of eyestalk and tentacle gestures and smells, and use limited telepathy, 40 feet for an otyugh or 60 feet for a neo-otyugh, to share simple feelings like hunger, discomfort at heat, cold or bright light, and a prey's coming death. They see 90 feet with infravision.

Gulguthra live in dungeons and ruins and strike bargains with the locals: no attacks in exchange for their dung, plus help defending the lair against intruders such as adventurers, which keeps waste and fresh meat coming. Neighbors sometimes ask them to guard treasure. An otyugh may be talked out of attacking with offers of food and friendship, but a neo-otyugh is more suspicious and vicious and usually attacks at once. They live alone, except that 10% of lairs hold a pair during mating season.

Otyughs shun sunlight for the comfortable dark. They mate for one month each year and produce a single young, which matures in four months; young ones have 3-5 HD and attacks of 1-6, 1-6 and 1-2, and Strength 16 suffices to escape their grip. No alchemist or wizard will touch their remains, which have no known value.