Red Silt Horror

Named for its scarlet, leathery hide, it measures only about 12 feet, small as horrors go. It is also the most mobile, since four of its tentacles are strong enough to carry it across the surface.

The red horror hunts with telepathy: repugnance, false sensory input, ESP, contact, attraction, and psionic blast. After making contact, it uses attraction or ESP to learn what the target wants most, then builds a complete sensory illusion of that thing with false sensory input.

When the lured creature comes close, the horror attacks with all eight tentacles. A roll that exceeds what it needs by four or more entangles the victim, who takes 1d6 each round with one to four limbs disabled. A Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll breaks free, as does dealing at least 6 points to the tentacle; any attack that misses the tentacle needs a second roll to see if it strikes the victim instead.

Each round a tentacle hits, the horror also gets a bite on the same foe for 1d6 plus venom that paralyzes for 3d6 rounds on a failed save vs. poison. An entangled creature faces this bite every round.

Reduced to 10 hit points, or after losing four or more tentacles, it uses its air jet to raise a cloud of sand or silt. Anyone within 60 feet who fails a save vs. breath weapon loses their sight for 1d4 rounds, and must make a Constitution check or spend 1d4 rounds sneezing and coughing. The cloud cannot be made in a mudflat.

It prefers the silt sea as long as feeding stays steady. When traffic dries up, it moves at night to another basin, a mudflat, or even open desert, to avoid being spotted. On the surface its movement drops to 6 and its AC worsens to 8. Once it finds a new lair, it burrows in with its air jet and waits.

Ravenous, it has eaten creatures twice its size and then caught another just hours later. Giants are its favorite food.