Sea Glutton

Sea gluttons are the giant serpents of sailors' oldest stories. The long body is clad in slick, dark green scales over a chalky gray belly, and the head looks more like a dragon's than a snake's, with a big mouth of sharp teeth and two jutting fangs. A crest of webbed spikes begins small on the snout, swells into a tall fin over the head and tapers off along roughly 20 feet of back; it can lie flat or rise for protection. Males also carry a webbed ring of spikes around the head, flared in fights to look bigger and fiercer.

They attack only when hunting, but nearly anything in or on the water counts as food, and they are often seen sunning on the surface, where disturbing one is unwise. Its attacks are a bite and a tail slap. A natural 19 or 20 on the bite swallows a man-sized or smaller creature whole. Instead of the tail slap it can try to constrict; if that hits, the victim takes 2d10 automatically every round until it escapes with a bend bars roll. Coiled around a ship, it can crush the vessel in 10 rounds.

They roam open water alone or in mated pairs. Hatchlings are abandoned at once and many are eaten, but those who last a year count as adults and can look after themselves. No one knows how large or old they can grow; sailors tell of one so huge it is taken for a small island. They hold no territory but are wary of one another, and they have been seen fighting rivals of the same sex, never the opposite one. They prefer deep water and hunt the surface, basking there after a meal.

Merchant ships of a southern trading nation report them most often off the shores of a forested coastal realm, where a deep ocean trench offers the deep saltwater channels and abundant sea life they favor.

They are perhaps the most feared creatures of a western ocean and certainly of that trench. Their main prey is a kind of giant sea worm, and they keep those worms' numbers in check. Once past their first year, they truly fear only one other predator, a great hunter of the depths that feeds on them.