Ruktoi

Each limb ends in three long, webbed, splayed digits used as paddles, and the tail flares into a wide flap that steers it across the silt. Its pale gray skin vanishes against the dust when it lies still, often with only snout and eyes above the surface. Ruktoi have no speech, communicating by scent and body movement.

Its wide body alone cannot keep it afloat, so the ruktoi levitates at will, as the spell, though never higher than the silt's surface. This mobility lets it overtake clumsier prey. It bites once per round for 1d12, or with a successful attack roll seizes a victim in its limbs. The captive must save vs. petrification at -3 each round or be hauled under to suffocate. A held victim may hold its breath under the normal rules and breaks free with a successful bend bars/lift gates roll.

Once reduced to half its hit points, the ruktoi churns up a silt cloud and flees at movement 9 that round. Opponents who fail a save vs. spell are blinded for a round, lose track of it, and cannot follow; without other tracking means, it gets away.

Ruktoi haunt the silt sea and the dusty basins along its edge, hunting floaters and careless silt runners alone. Some have been tamed or magically controlled to ferry passengers and light cargo across the silt.

They meet only to mate. The female scatters 10 to 30 eggs that sink to the bottom; survivors hatch after six weeks, rise to the surface, and reach full size six weeks later.